Note: This document has been revised and includes new information about the handling of laboratory specimens.

To ensure that healthcare workers and additional patients do not acquire this syndrome if/when a patient is seen in a clinic, the ETC, or admitted to the UIHC please follow these guidelines.

If a patient presents with:

• fever > 100.5 F or 38 C, or history of recent fever, and

• clinical findings of respiratory illness (cough, shortness of breath, difficulty breathing, hypoxia, or radiographic findings of either pneumonia or acute respiratory distress syndrome),

ASK the patient

• Whether he/she traveled in one of the following areas in the 10 days before onset of symptoms:

• People’s Republic of China,
• Hong Kong,
• Taiwan,
• Viet Nam,
• Singapore, or
• Toronto or

• Whether he/she was a close contact with someone who was in this area and who had respiratory symptoms compatible with SARS.

If the patient answers YES to either of these questions place the patient in:

• Contact isolation
• Droplet isolation, and
• Airborne isolation

In clinics:

• Have the patient wear a surgical mask
• Put the patient in a negative pressure room, if possible.
• All healthcare workers must wear:

• N 95 mask to enter the room
• Gown
• Eye protection (eye glasses with side shields or a visor)
• Gloves when touching anything in the room

For patients being admitted to the hospital:

• The patient needs a private, negative pressure room.
• All healthcare workers must wear:

• N 95 mask to enter the room
• Gown
• Eye protection (eye glasses with side shields or a visor)
• Gloves when touching anything in the room

Page the hospital epidemiology pager 3158 if you encounter a possible case of SARS. Please note that the travel destinations that carry risk for exposure to SARS will almost certainly expand as the epidemic spreads. For this and other reasons, you should strongly consider getting an infectious diseases consult when you encounter a patient with a respiratory syndrome suspicious for SARS.

All diagnostic specimens sent to any part of the Hospital Laboratories require special handling. In all cases, such specimens should be labeled "rule out SARS" so that the laboratory can process the specimens using appropriate precautions. Avoid sending specimens through the pneumatic tube system. Any questions about specimen collection and labeling can be directed to the clinical microbiology laboratory (6-2591).


Helpful web sites include:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/sars/triage_interim_guidance.htm,

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/sars/clinicians.htm