EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS OF HOSPITALS DURING A PANDEMIC

Abstract

At the time of writing of this study, the world is struggling to contain the COVID-19 virus. The spread of the virus was boosted by movement of people through various forms of cross-border travels. The elderly and immunocompromised are the groups of people most at risk of succumbing to the virus upon contraction. The healthcare sectors around the world are on the front lines to contain and treat the infected. Outbreaks are not a rare phenomenon, recent decades have seen other coronaviruses such as SARS, H1N1, Ebola virus and MERS spread through the globe.

Hospitals have to continue operations even as they admit infected patients, and it is hard for them to stay one step ahead of the virus and prevent it from circulating within their walls. A hospital, while a place of healing, could also become a hotbed for the virus to propagate. From the research, hospitals around the world have struggled in a variety of measures to contain the virus. This is affected by the overall governing bodies of the hospitals and the hospitals’ responses themselves.

Thus, this study seeks to understand how hospitals in Singapore are handling an ongoing pandemic. This study will cover how individual hospitals in Singapore are coping with the current situation, with their pandemic responses. The results of this study show that hospitals in Singapore have contained the virus effectively, through a variety of reasons such as government aid and strict virus containment protocols. The comparison of Singapore hospitals to other hospitals around the world sheds light on ways other hospitals’ response to the pandemic could be improved.