2.1 Information Sources and Eligibility Criteria
The search for the management of COVID-19 CPGs was carried out on March 30, 2020, using documents issued by regional or international groups or government organizations in English and Chinese, through the following search engines using appropriate keywords: Embase; Medline; UpToDate; Cochrane Library; Database for Chinese Technical Periodicals(VIP);China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI); the websites of China national, provincial, local Health and Fitness Commission; the website of WHO. In this study the following keywords were used: ‘guideline’, ‘novel/ new coronavirus’, ‘COVID-19’. The search was limited to December 2019 and not earlier.
For included CPGs in this research, they must meet the inclusion criteria as follows: (1) the CPGs provide systematically recommendations or strategies in any population with COVID-19 on epidemiology, screening, diagnosis of disease, preventive measures, therapeutic interventions that assists clinical practitioners to make appropriate decisions under specific circumstances; (2) the CPGs was conducted under the concerted effort of public health organizations, professional societies, medical associations, or government agencies at the national, provincial, or local level. Since the role in the assessment of AGREE II of health technology assessments has not been formally evaluated2, the exclusion criteria are as follow:(1) guidance documents or handbook that address health care organizational issues, or guidelines were not issued on a regional level; (2)documents that were not guidelines; (3) guidelines that were concerning mainly about traditional Chinese medicine.