The Application of Hazard Vulnerability Analysis in the Prevention and Control of COVID-19 in Medical Institutions

BACKGROUND: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused massive casualties, severe economic losses, and poses a threat to the world. This study’s primary objective was to analyze the hospital’s potential hazards of COVID-19 prevention and control. The second objective was to review the disaster plan and make recommendations to minimize the spread of COVID-19 in hospitals. METHODS: An expert group for the prevention and control of COVID-19 in the First People’s Hospital of Long-quanyi Dis-trict, Chengdu, China was established. We adopted the hazard vulnerability analysis (HVA) to risk-stratify potential hazards and calculated relative risk values. We used the Delphi expert consultation method to propose and implement targeted improvement measures for the top five potential hazards. Then, the effects before and after the intervention were compared. RESULTS: The top five hazards were: insufficient Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) (25.68%), inadequate diagnosis ability of clinicians (22.55%), and inadequate management strategies of patients and caregivers (22.38%), lack of professional ability of pre-checking and triage staff (16.96%), lack of knowledge of COVID-19 of medical staff (15.59%). After taking targeted improvement measures, the average score of the hospital staff’s COVID-19 knowledge test increased from 73.26 points to 90.44 points, the average test score of the outsourcing company employees increased from 68.55 to 89.75 points. The differences were statistically significant (P<0.05). CONCLUSION: HVA can be used to systematically risk-stratify potential threats, measure the probability of those potential hazards, and develop various hospital prevention and control measures for COVID-19 epidemics.