Abstract
Introduction: COVID-19 pandemic is a serious worldwide health threat. For this reason critical health-care measures have been applied. This study is to describe the organizational procedure in setting up a coronavirus disease 2019 triage unit in Tajoura Triage Centre (TTC). Methods: TTC is a local triage in Tripoli/Libya which set-up in an independent building and consists of three areas: 1. Pre-triage, 2. Triage, and 3. Triage plus. The Pre-triage is to classify COVID-19 infected patients and transfer them to the Triage area which patients undergo to assessment and diagnosis. If the patient symptomatic or suspected, nasopharyngeal swabs are collected. Some cases need further investigation which are transfer to Triage plus. At this point, patients are discharged home after additional investigations or admitted to the isolation centre for administration. Results: A total of 6432 cases were screened between 20 June 2020 and 31 august 2020 at TTC. Of these, 726 (15.6%) tested positive for COVID-19. Of all positively-tested patients 294 (40.5%) were female and 432 (59.5%) were male. However, the negative cases were 3913 (84.4%). The mean age for positive cases was (35) and the mean age for negative cases was (45). The mortality was reported 5 (0.68%) which were 3 females and 2 males. Discussion: TTC unit was creation successfully and also has been able to effectively screen and organize the spread of COVID-19 within the area even the COVID-19 is still unclear. This study helps other health care to develop similar triage centre. Keywords