Outcomes of Covid-19 Protective Measures in Endoscopy

Detailed description: SARS-Covid-19 virus pandemic has had a big impact both socially and on
operation of health facilities. During the Covid-19 outbreak most of the scheduled
endoscopies were cancelled and only emergent and urgent endoscopies were performed in the
unit. This meant that for six weeks, around 98% of our daily workload was cancelled. During
that time the investigators have developed a protocol in order to resume scheduled endoscopic
activity in the decreasing phase of the pandemic.

The hypothesis of this prospective observational study is that implementation of a protocol
based upon Covid PCR tests and clinical triage is useful to categorize two types of Covid-19
infection risk and two levels of personal protection equipments required.

The primary aim is to evaluate the outcomes of implementing a protective protocol with two
levels of protection for Covid-19 in the endoscopy unit. As secondary aims, the
investigators, want to evaluate the endoscopy unit staff and patients infection rate after
implementation of the protective protocol; and the utility of previous Covid PCR testing and
on day clinical triage to discriminate patients before endoscopy.

A brief daily questionnaire will be filled by all the endoscopy unit staff members
questioning about type of procedures performed in their allocated endoscopy room, level of
protection used and PCR status of their attended patients. Patients will be followed up for a
period of two weeks to discard development of Covid-19 disease with possible origin in their
visit to the endoscopy unit.