The Evolving Demand for Negative Pressure Isolation Facilities during COVID 19: Trial of the Negative Pressure Isolation Tent

Abstract

With COVID 19, more than ever before, healthcare institutions are realizing the need to develop, implement, assess, review and revise their infection control policies and guidelines of practice. In many facilities, patients who are known to be or suspected to be infectious are physically isolated from other patients and people. This is the rightful and ethical thing to do. These patients are usually identified through surveillance or using clinical and/ or microbiological criteria. Whilst practices such as personal and hand hygiene, safe infection control practices, distancing and others are useful, the use of formal isolation in hospitals represent an important step. This is also essential to reduce spread to healthcare workers. In this paper, we describe a Negative Pressure Full Isolation Tent (NPFIT) which we tried out via simulation and the conduct of a simple smoke test to understand more on the concept of negative pressure and what it entails. It is our hope that readers will get a better understanding of this concept, through our simplified demonstration and trial.