COVID-19, caused by a novel corona virus termed SARSCoV-2, originated in Wuhan/China in December 2019.1 Subsequently COVID-19 spread over the whole world and had been labelled a pandemic by the WHO on March 11, 2020.2 With the increase of proven SARS-CoV-2 infections, an increase of surgical cases in this patient collective had to be anticipated as well. The two major strategies to fight the virus – in public as well as in hospitals - were ‘exposition prophylaxis’ and ‘quarantine measures’. Therefore, with arrival of COVID-19 in Salzburg/Austria in mid-March 2020, we established a specialized “COVID Surgery Service (CSS)”, exclusively dealing with the COVID patients, and a “split team structure” (2 teams of specialists with complementing expertise) for the Non-COVID cases.