Field Hospitals to Face COVID-19: Requirements and Lessons Learned in the Design and Construction of the Lagoa Barra Hospital – Brazil Alexandre Passos Ribeiro a | Kemmylle Sanny de Matos Ferreira b Christine Kowal Chinelli a | Carlos Alberto Pereira Soares a * a Federal University Fluminense, Graduate Program in Civil Engineering: Niterói, Brasil. b University of São Paulo, Graduate Program in Civil Engineering, São Paulo: São Paulo, Brasil. * Corresponding author: carlossoares.uff@gmail.com ABSTRACT The construction of field hospitals has been a strategy adopted worldwide to face the consequences of the pandemic impacts caused by COVID-19 on healthcare systems. Specific characteristics of this pandemic, such as different ways and speeds of the disease transmission, and the implications at the population health and the productive system, has made the project, management, and construction of field hospitals for the patients with COVID-19 present specific features. In this work, for each phase of the FHLB implantation, we present the main concepts, premises, restrictions, and challenges, focusing mainly on the needs programs of the project that guided the configuration of the environments, the definition of the circulation flows, the typology of the beds, the main management tools used during the project's planning and control process, and in the lessons learned. Keywords: COVID-19, Emergency Assistance, Field Hospital, Temporary Hospital. 1. INTRODUCTION At the end of 2019, an unknown type of coronavirus, initially identified in Wuhan – China, caused a disease called COVID-19. Due to its high capacity for contagion and to impact the population health, COVID-19 put the global public healthcare institutions on alert. The World Health Organization defined the disease as a pandemic on March 11, 2020 (WHO, 2020). The first case in Brazil was registered on January 23, 2020, and, since then, the curves of cases and deaths increase exponentially. The public healthcare system became incapable of attending all the infected population, causing a collapse due to the high demand in several Brazilian cities. In the “COVID-19 Clinical Management Protocol in Primary Healthcare” mild cases require therapeutic management and social isolation. In contrast, severe cases are submitted to clinical stabilization procedures, and the highly severe ones need to be directed to emergency service or a hospital (Brazilian Ministry of Health, 2020). According to Brazilian Association of Intensive Care (AMIB) and Brazilian Association of Emergency Medicine (ABRAMED), the referral to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) or the Inpatient Unit (IU) is defined according to the severity of the clinical condition detected during the screening performed on the patient who arrives at the hospital. For ICU admission, the highest degree of survival and patient capacity is also assessed, based on the organic dysfunction score SOFA (Sequential Organ Failure Assessment) (AMIB and ABRAMEDE, 2020). page 387