Gray area; a novel strategy to confront COVID-19 in emergency departments

Introduction: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, affects almost every aspect of human life. To confront this crisis, a separate ward called gray area was designed for emergency departments (EDs) and applied at the provincial level in East-Azerbaijan, Iran. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of this project, increase the serviceability and segregation of the location of infected patients, and show how feasible and fruitful it can be.

Methods: This study is an analytical study. The statistical data collection from 39 hospitals was performed between 20 March to 21 September 2020. Descriptive Statistics as well as correlation coefficients were calculated using the 26th version of IBM SPSS.

Results: Among 77489 COVID-19 patients admitted to the EDs, approximately 0.38% of patients died in EDs. 22.63% of EDs area was allocated to COVID-19 patients and 70.46% of ED nurses, worked in the gray area. There was no significant correlation between area, number of patients, number of nurses, number of shifts of nurses, number of nurses for each patient, number of nurse shifts for each patient, and area for each patient with mortality rate and rates of disposition in 6 and 12 hours.

Conclusion: Gray area is an appropriate strategy to confront COVID-19 in EDs and if more studies approve these results, this strategy can be used to confront this pandemic and future similar conditions in resource-limited countries.