• Muh-Yong Yen, Jonathan Schwartz, Chwan-Chuen King, Chung-Ming Lee, Po-Ren Hsueh, and Society of Taiwan Long-term Care Infection Prevention and Control.
• Division of Infectious Diseases, Taipei City Hospital, School of Medicine, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan. Electronic address: myyen1121@gmail.com.
• J Microbiol Immunol Infect. 2020 Jun 1; 53 (3): 447-453.

AbstractThe COVID-19 outbreak has drawn heightened attention from public health scholars researching ways to limit its spread. Much of the research has been focused on minimizing transmission in hospitals and in the general community. However, a particularly vulnerable community that has received relatively little attention is elders residing in long-term care facilities (LTCFs). In this article we address this relative lack of attention, arguing that enhanced traffic control bundling (eTCB) can and should be adopted and implemented as a means of protecting LTCF residents and staff. Enhanced TCB has been widely applied in hospital settings and has proven effective at limiting droplet and fomite transmissions both within hospitals and between hospitals and the general community. By effectively adapting eTCB to LTCF conditions, particularly by incorporating compartmentalization within zones plus active surveillance, COVID-19 transmission into and throughout LTCFs can be minimized, thereby saving numerous lives among an especially vulnerable population.Copyright © 2020. Published by Elsevier B.V.

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