Impact of COVID-19 on a Tertiary Otolaryngology Practice in Singapore

Otolaryngology in the face of A pandemic

Although infrequent, pandemics are serious public health concerns with unpredictable courses. The COVID-19 pandemic began over 2 years ago and is far from over. This pandemic has spread rapidly throughout the world and led to several million deaths, making it commonly compared to the deadly Spanish influenza pandemic. Policy and safety measures are constantly being adapted to reduce transmission rates. The pandemic places stress on all healthcare workers, but especially otolaryngology providers due to their direct contact with airway connected cavities. This puts them at high risk for infection and has impacted inpatient and outpatient otolaryngology care, as well as education, research, and mental health.

An Otorhinolaryngology Perspective Into a Hospital COVID-19 Cluster

In this commentary, we share our experience of a COVID-19 cluster which developed within a frontline healthcare facility designated for treating COVID-19 patients. We provide an Otorhinolaryngology perspective into the key challenges, analyses and responses. We discuss how we identified and isolated infected patients and staff, uncovered the responsible COVID-19 variant strain B1.617.2 and instituted various measures to overcome this cluster. The measures include ceasing non-essential services, limiting transfers of patients, a heightened stance of personal protective equipment, ring-fencing of staff and enhanced COVID-19 testing. With rapid hospital wide efforts, there were no new non-isolated cases from our hospital cluster 3 days after the wards were locked down. The cluster which developed on 28-April-2021 was closed on 6-Jun-2021, with 48 cases, ten of whom were healthcare workers. Some of these lessons may be useful for consideration should another healthcare institution face a similar crisis in the future.

One Year on: An Overview of Singapore's Response to COVID-19-What We Did, How We Fared, How We Can Move Forward

Background—One year has passed since the first COVID-19 case in Singapore. This scoping review commemorates Singaporean researchers that have expanded the knowledge on this novel virus. We aim to provide an overview of healthcare-related articles published in peer-reviewed journals, authored by the Singapore research community about COVID-19 during the first year of the pandemic. Methods—This was reported using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) protocol. It included healthcare-related articles about COVID-19 published between 23 January 2020 and 22 January 2021 with a Singapore-affiliated author. MEDLINE, Embase, Scopus, Web of Science, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Google Scholar, and local journals were searched. The articles were screened independently by two reviewers. Results—The review included 504 articles. Most of the articles narrated the changes to hospital practice (210), while articles on COVID-19 pathology (94) formed most of the non-narrative papers. Publications on public health (61) and the indirect impacts to clinical outcomes (45) were other major themes explored by the research community. The remaining articles detailed the psychological impact of the pandemic (35), adaptations of medical education (30), and narratives of events (14). Conclusion—Amidst a resurgence of community cases involving variant COVID-19 strains, the resources from the research community will provide valuable guidance to navigate these uncertain times.