Interim guidance note for hospitals: managing hospital services, maintaining essential routine health care and generating surge capacity

Overview

Hospitals are core to the novel coronavirus disease (‎COVID-19)‎ response. In the initial stages of the outbreak, hospitals may have the capacity to maintain essential services in addition to managing COVID-19 cases. However, as the COVID-19 caseload increases, they will need to make strategic shifts to optimize the limited resources to provide maximum benefit to the community. This document provides national and subnational health managers, senior decision-makers, hospital administrators and hospital staff, with interim guidance on actions that may be initiated to meet rapidly increasing demand generated by the COVID-19 outbreak, while maintaining access to quality essential hospital services.