The PRIEST (Pandemic Respiratory Infection Emergency System Triage) Study for Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Carl Marincowitz and colleagues at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom and the University of Cape Town in South Africa will develop a risk assessment tool to help emergency clinicians quickly decide whether a patient with suspected COVID-19 needs emergency care or can be safely treated at home to avoid overburdening hospitals particularly in low- and middle- income countries (LMICs). They will use existing data to which they have access on 50,000 patients with suspected COVID-19 infection who sought emergency care in the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Sudan to develop prediction models for specific COVID-19 related outcomes in all income settings. These prediction models will be used to develop risk stratification tools, which enable providers to identify the right level of care and services for distinct subgroups of patients. These will be developed with input from patient and clinical stakeholders. The team will test the performance of their risk assessment tools for identifying high-risk patients with existing triage methods.