Prevention of new coronavirus infection (COVID-19) in a specialized psychiatric hospital

At the end of 2019, an outbreak of a new coronavirus infection occurred in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), with its epicenter in the city of Wuhan (Hubei Province). The World Health Organization (WHO) has defined the official name of the infection caused by the novel coronavirus as Coronavirus disease 2019 («COVID-19») [4]. The International Committee on the Taxonomy of Viruses assigned the official name of the causative agent of infection – SARS-CoV-2 [3]. In accordance with the sanitary legislation of the Russian Federation, the virus is assigned to pathogenicity group II [5]. COVID-19 occurs in two main forms that are subject to registration as independent nosological units: clinically pronounced – (U07.1) and carriage of the causative agent of coronavirus infection – (Z22.8) [4]. All forms of manifestations of coronavirus infection are dangerous, but the asymptomatic form poses the greatest epidemiological danger, due to the difficulty of detection and, as a result, the untimely implementation of anti-epidemic measures [2]. The role of COVID-19 as a healthcare-associated infection has been established [3]. Sysin E.I. and co-authors established the maximum values of the foci index (IO) for nosocomial spread of COVID-19 in psychiatric hospitals [9]. The inclusion of COVID-19 in the «List of diseases that pose a danger to others» [7] determines the epidemic significance of the disease. Keywords: new coronavirus infection, anti-epidemic regime, psychiatric hospital, quality of anti-epidemic regime.