Isolation rooms in hospitals and healthcare facilities - increased capacity with cost-effective and quickly implemented a ventilation solution

COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic has a devastating social and economic impact on humans leaving hundreds of millions of people at risk of extreme poverty.

Until April 1st 2021, more than 129 million people have been infected, and nearly 2.9 million deaths have been reported worldwide.

In only a year, the coronavirus pandemic has wiped out decades of global development in everything from health to economy and beyond.The COVID-19 pandemic also reveals shortcomings in emergency preparedness around the world.

In the case of similar virus outbreaks, there will be an urgent need for a fast and effective method to increase the capacity of hospital isolation rooms and intensive care units to cope with the influx of patients.

The present project aims at creating and designing a novel cost-effective, flexible and easy-to-implement solution for upgrading standard patient rooms to simplified isolation rooms (AIIR) for airborne infection.

To that end: (I) A local ventilation exhaust will be designed, optimized, and implemented to remove emitted respiratory droplets from the hospitalized patients.

Also (II) we will avoid leakage out of the room using an additional ventilation system smartly integrated into the standard patient room.

Finally (III) we will combine the first two steps and verify the system (proof-of-concept) in laboratory measurements with industry participation. The solution will be used both for new construction and retrofitting of hospital buildings.