Globally, the capacity of healthcare systems across continents has been strained and put to the test with the emergence of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The timely need to ensure the availability of healthcare facilities to isolate and manage the surge in COVID-19 cases without overwhelming existing hospital capacity has posed challenges in many countries. In this paper, we discuss the conceptualisation, preparations and operationalisation of a community healthcare facility that was set up within a short time frame to attend to the convalescent needs of a large number of COVID-19 patients in the early phase of handling the pandemic. In the first month of operations, we monitored a total of 2129 clinical encounters, with the majority of patients between 17-35 years of age and between day 2 to day 6 of illness upon admission. Overall, there was a good outcome for the patients, with only 2.3% requiring transfer back to restructured hospitals. There was also no mortality. We hope that the sharing of our experiences of the challenges and learning lessons gleaned may be useful to guide individuals in planning for the future preparedness of healthcare systems in managing pandemics.
Keywords: community care facilities; coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19); isolation facilities; pandemic medicine; primary care; severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).