Introduction
In December 2019, a series of pneumonia cases of unknown etiology emerged in Wuhan, China [1,2]. This condition was later confirmed to be coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization characterized COVID-19 as a pandemic considering its alarming levels of spread and severity. COVID-19 poses a great public health and clinical burden worldwide. By April 28, 2020, 82,858 confirmed cases and 4,633 deaths related to COVID-19 had been reported in mainland China. Among them, 50,333 confirmed cases and 3,869 deaths were from Wuhan alone.
As the peak of the epidemic passed, the daily confirmed cases of SARS-CoV-2 infections in Wuhan dropped to single digits beginning March 11, 2020. Wuhan city ended their lockdown, and people have been allowed to gradually return to normal working and living conditions since April 8, 2020. As one of the largest medical centers in Wuhan, our hospital also takes on the medical needs of other non-COVID-19 patients. The general outpatient obstetrics and gynecology department of Wuhan Union Hospital has received female patients as usual since March 12. To avoid hospital infections, a visit procedure was developed, and a series of COVID-19-associated tests, including the SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid test (NAT) of throat swabs, chest CT scan and SARS-CoV-2 specific serological test, are conducted.
Here, to optimize outpatient screening methods after the peak of the epidemic, we performed a retrospective analysis of COVID-19-associated test results and reported the visit procedure for obstetrics and gynecology outpatients from March 12 to April 26, 2020, at our hospital.