Authors (including presenting author) :
TSANG LF (1), CHOW SM (2), LEUNG LM (1)
Affiliation :
(1) Nursing Services Division, Haven of Hope Hospital (2) Infection Control Team, Haven of Hope Hospital
Introduction :
A number of people is unceasingly confirmed to infect coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Hong Kong since 23 January 2020. COVID-19 vaccines are thought to curbing pandemic in most countries enough to have had access to them. The spokesman of the Scientific Committee on Vaccine Preventive Diseases advised to use vaccine at the population level. However, it is quite complicated to estimate the earliest date to receive COVID-19 vaccination and the total number of doses ought to receive because of a variety of situations such as type of COVID-19 vaccine, age group, general public, immunocompromised persons, residents of residential care homes, prior COVID-19 infection, and number of doses of vaccine before infection.
Objectives :
To develop a vaccination time calculator to facilitate staff to arrange COVID-19 vaccination for in-patients timely.
Methodology :
The information of COVID-19 vaccination was retrieved according to COVID-19 vaccination programme published from Centre for Health Protection, Department of Health, the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. An excel file was developed to facilitate the vaccination date calculation. Three spreadsheets were designed to fit for 3 different specific groups including residents of residential care homes, aged 18 to 49, and aged 50 or above. A matrix table, which is composed of general public and immunocompromised individuals, COVID-19 recovered persons and the situation of the number of doses they have received, has guided nurses to select an appropriate data cell of patients’ criteria to input the date. Staff requires to provide the date of the first documented positive COVID test or the date of the last dose. Thus, the earliest date to receive COVID-19 vaccine can be automatically calculated.
Result & Outcome :
With the vaccination time calculator, total numbers of patients who have received Sinovac and BioNTech vaccination during hospitalization were reported as 288 from 3 March 2022 to 17 December 2022, and 285 from 24 February to 21 December 2022 respectively as at 22.12.2022. The vaccination time calculator is the convenient tool to estimate an appropriate date of patients who may receive COVID-19 vaccine.