Setting up hospital care provision to patients with COVID-19: lessons learnt at a 2400-bed academic tertiary center in São Paulo, Brazil

ABSTRACT As of August 30, 2020, Brazil ranked second among countries with the highest number of COVID-19 cases, with the city of São Paulo as the national epidemic epicenter. Local public healthcare institutions were challenged to respond to a fast-growing hospital demand, reengineering care provision to optimize clinical outcomes and minimize intra-hospital coronavirus infection. In this paper we describe how the largest public hospital complex in Latin America faced this unprecedented burden, managing severe COVID-19 cases while sustaining specialized care to patients with other conditions....