COVID-19 positivity in the COVID suspect and green zones of a large emergency department during the first wave of the pandemic in South India

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a necessary division of the emergency department (ED) into the COVID suspect zone and a green zone based on a modified “The” Christian Medical college (CMCTS). Triaging was initially done based on the epidemiological criteria and evolved into symptom-based assessment when community transmission began. Methodology: This retrospective study included all patients who were triaged in the ED from April 2020 to December 2020. Data were collected from the ED triage software and were analyzed to determine the performance of the modified triage criteria in admitting patients to the ED. Results: Forty-three thousand patients were triaged during the study. Of which 35.9% (n = 15429) were sent to the COVID suspect zone and 64.1% (n = 27571) to the green zone. Of the 8490 (55%) nasopharyngeal swab reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests done in the COVID suspect zone, 61.4% were positive for COVID-19 while only 9.2% (n = 274) of 2866 tested in the green zone were positive. COVID-19 positivity was the highest in the mid-pandemic months of July, August, and September 2020. In the COVID suspect zone, factors for predicting a negative RT-PCR result were priority 1 presentation and early and late pandemic presentations. The positive predictive value of our modified triage criteria during the pandemic was 85% with a higher accuracy during the peak of the first wave (July–September 2020). Conclusion: The modified CMCTS successfully segregated COVID-19-positive patients from the COVID-19 negative patients during the first wave of the COVID-19 in 2020. The CMCTS criteria can be easily adopted or adapted in other hospitals in India in case of future waves of COVID-19.