Covid-19 outbreak: Do's and don'ts for quarantine facilities in India

The guideline includes basic sanitisation principles along with an advisory to maintain adequate distance between healthcare workers and patients.

Pointers on setting up quarantine facilities have also been issued. For instance, they should preferably be set up on the outskirts of cities.

During the quarantine period, possible patients should be daily monitored for fever and respiratory symptoms.

Monitoring visits need to be conducted inside quarantine facilities and outside the facility in the surrounding campus by public health and incharge officers and gaps to be noted.

Ambulances need to be placed in the facility in standby mode for transport, including advanced lifesaving ambulance.

Disposable and pre-packed food needs to be served to quarantined people and they are to be kept on separate beds with distance of 1-2 metres with no bed facing opposite to each other.

For baseline testing, samples (nasopharyngeal swab and throat swabs) for COVID-19 need to be collected from all quarantine people and sent with triple layer packaging maintained in a cold chain (2-8 degrees Celsius) to the designated laboratory and not elsewhere.

In the quarantine facility, the chief medical officer needs to be appointed as incharge or nodal officer for overall coordination and supervision of the quarantine centre.

Services of general duty medical doctors, medicine specialists, pediatrics, microbiologists (for diagnostic support and IPC), psychiatrists and psychologists are required for routine examination and relevant clinical care of the quarantined people, the advisory said.

Paramedics, including staff nurses and lab technicians, pharmacists need to be posted.

Public health specialists are required for monitoring public health aspects of the facility, while services of clinical microbiologists are required for sample collection, packaging and infection prevention and control practices, it said, adding that house keeping staff also needed to be deployed.

Ambulances need to be placed in the facility in standby mode for transport, including advanced lifesaving ambulance.

Disposable and pre-packed food needs to be served to quarantined people and they are to be kept on separate beds with distance of 1-2 metres with no bed facing opposite to each other.

For baseline testing, samples (nasopharyngeal swab and throat swabs) for COVID-19 need to be collected from all quarantine people and sent with triple layer packaging maintained in a cold chain (2-8 degrees Celsius) to the designated laboratory and not elsewhere.

Healthcare workers shouldn’t use soiled or used PPE. Furthermore, they need to be sensitised on the correct usage.