Biomedical Research and Clinical Reviews Copy rights@ Fatimah Lateef et.al. Auctores Publishing – Volume 1(2)-011 www.auctoresonline.org ISSN: 2692-9406 Page 1 of 5 The Evolving Demand for Negative Pressure Isolation Facilities during COVID 19: Trial of the Negative Pressure Isolation Tent Fatimah Lateef FRCS (A&E) MBBS FAMS (Em Med)1* , Sunny Chia S H2, Alan Teo H B3, Tan Teck Choon4 1Senior Consultant, Dept of Emergency Medicine, Singapore General Hospital, Professor, Duke NUS Graduate Medical School Professor, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore. Director, SingHealth Duke NUS Institute of Medical Simulation (SIMS) 2Business Development Manager 3Director, Airtech Equipment Pvt Ltd 4Office for Service Transformation Singapore Health Services Pte Ltd *Corresponding Author: Fatimah Lateef, Senior Consultant, Dept of Emergency Medicine, Singapore General Hospital, Professor, Duke NUS Graduate Medical School Professor, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore. Director, SingHealth Duke NUS Institute of Medical Simulation (SIMS) Received date: June 16, 2020; Accepted date: June 26, 2020; Published date: July 31, 2020 Citation: Lateef F, Sunny Chia S H, Alan Teo H B, Tan Teck C. (2020) The Evolving Demand for Negative Pressure Isolation Facilities during COVID 19: Trial of the Negative Pressure Isolation Tent. Biomedical Research and Clinical Reviews. 1(2); DOI: 10.31579/2692-9406/011 Copyright:©2020 Fatimah Lateef, This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. 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. Key words: isolation, covid-19, negative pressure, smoke test, negative pressure tent Introduction COVID 19 posed multiple challenges in every sector, including healthcare, which is leading the operations during the pandemic. Healthcare workers are not immune to the infection, even as they lead the way in managing high numbers of patients. They too have to observe the necessary distancing, contact tracing and infection control measures which are implemented. At work, they have to adhere strictly to PPE (personal protective equipment) guidelines in managing patients. In many healthcare institutions, new, modular team-based rosters have been implemented to reduce cross-interaction between staff. [1,2] In fact, departments are also planning strategies in the event that they are faced with a situation whereby the whole team may have to be quarantined due to one or more members being affected or testing COVID 19 positive. [3, 4] The issue of isolation and air filtration is proving to be a critical consideration for the health and safety of healthcare workers. With each infectious disease outbreak, it is becoming more apparent on the need to address this, as part of the general infection control measures. [2, 5] Today, isolation facilities are equipped with negative pressure rooms and wards. This is fast becoming a standard requirement in hospitals and healthcare institutions. Even Emergency Departments (EDs), which represent the frontline of the hospitals, are equipped with negative pressure rooms and resuscitation cubicles today. This has become an essential requirement in view that the infectious patients presenting to the ED are often undifferentiated. [3, 5, 6] All about Negative Pressure A negative pressure room refers to a volumetric space whereby the internal atmospheric pressure is lower than the spaces into which it will open. This negative pressure within isolation rooms will help to control the airflow so that the number of airborne infectious particles and bio- aerosols are reduced to a level which ensures cross-infection of other persons within the healthcare facility is unlikely. These isolation rooms must be very well-sealed in order to prevent excess air leakages into or out of the room. Preferably, the windows are those that do not open. The tighter the room is sealed, the better the differential pressure can be maintained.[2,5] The recommended pressure difference between these airborne infection isolation rooms and the corridor or the adjacent ambient pressure areas should be maintained at about 30Pa if the room has an ante- Open Access Research Article Biomedical Research and Clinical Reviews Fatimah Lateef AUCTORES Globalize your Research