Reflections of an Earliest Established Screening and Testing Facility for COVID-19 in the Largest Metropolis, Pakistan

• Main Authors: Fatima Kanwal, Karishma Kanhya Lal, Asra Qureshi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Liaquat National Hospital and Medical College 2021-05-01
• Series: Liaquat National Journal of Primary Care
• Subjects: covid-19; covid pakistan; screening; ards; coronavirus; pandemic.
• Online Access: https://journals.lnh.edu.pk/lnjpc/pdf/c612e3d4-91f1-472a-8d37-b4e4871d6d0f.pdf

As the world struggles to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, this article talks about the experience and findings of the first COVID-19 screening facility in a tertiary care hospital in Karachi, Pakistan. Department of Family Medicine at Aga Khan University (AKU) took initiative where COVID-19 screening of stable patients first began in a dedicated area. Since testing kits were limited and community spread had not started, nurses would screen every walk-in patient based on the presence of fever, cough, travel history and exposure to COVID-19 positive patient in the last 14 days, and advise swab testing if indicated. Out of 742-screened patients, approximately 66% were males and 34% were females. 38% of patients reported fever and 54% of patients reported cough. 8% (65) patients checked all three screening criteria of cough, fever and international travel exposure whereas 35% were asymptomatic. The majority had clinical exposure (38.3%) followed by public exposure (33.4%) and international travel exposure (19.8%).