 Good morning everyone. I am Dr. Priyam Ghatta. I am a consultant neurosurgeon and spine surgeon working at Manipal Hospital Whitefield. Since the time the World Health Organization has declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic, it has had widespread implications on the healthcare system. The Neurosurgery Society is the world over. They have produced varying documents which will serve as a guidance for all practicing neurosurgeons throughout the world. At Manipal Hospital Whitefield, we have accommodated some practices into our existing system. There has been widespread fear amongst the community as to whether they can visit the hospital and if they come to the hospital, how safe they are going to be. So we have adopted some practices about which I will be talking about. Starting from the outpatient department, now all patients who enter our hospital, they are screened thermally at the entrance and if they are found that they do not have fever, then they are sent to the respective departments. In the neurosurgery department, we make it a practice to use face masks while examining a patient and we always practice good hand hygiene. We use an alcohol-based sanitizer which we use with which we sanitize our hands before doing a physical examination. Another thing is we are trying to avoid paper-based reports and touching MRI films. Wherever possible, we are making use of electronic media, an internet-based facility available in our hospital to access the MRI reports so that we can avoid touching inanimate objects and to curb the spread of infection from one person to another. When it comes to outpatient departments, we are also trying to minimize face-to-face visits and we are encouraging telemedicine or video consultations. So patients can make use of this facility and they can talk to us or consult with us online through video consults. Though video consults are the need of the hour, there has to be a cautious exercise in using video consults and there are real emergencies, patients would have to make a visit to the hospital. So we have divided neurosurgical cases into three types. Acute cases are those which would require prompt attention or maybe even a surgery immediately or at best within the first 24 hours. Such cases normally include head injuries, severe head injuries, brain hemorrhages, brain strokes or brain tumors which have bled. So these kind of cases cannot wait and we will have to manage them. So in such acute presentations, normally the neurosurgeon and his team would make use of personal protective equipment and exercise maximum precautions and presume every patient to be COVID positive until the final test comes as negative or positive whatever it may be. Sub-acute cases are those which can normally wait for about 7 to 10 days. They would include many examples of such patients would be those who have large brain tumors which are giving a lot of problems such as headache which is raising the pressure in the brain. So even these patients would not be able to wait indefinitely for a treatment. So normally the treatment can wait for a maximum of about a say a week or 10 days. So such patients they are screened by the physician first and certain basic blood investigations and a routine chest x-ray is done and we also work these patients with COVID 19 tests and we prepare them for surgeries. Chronic patients are those who have conditions or diseases which have been present for quite some time and where normally the treatment can wait for about a month or so. So such patients are discouraged from going for an immediate surgery and they are advised to wait and probably take medications for some more period of time and possibly you know when the situation gets better then we can think of a surgical treatment for them if the disease or condition mandates it. So the safety starts with us please use an alcohol based sanitizer and take due care.