Infection Control Improvement of a Negative-Pressurized Pediatric Intensive Care Unit

The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the novel SARS-CoV-2 virus raises alarming concern around the healthcare facilities due to the significant increase in patient inflow. Negative-pressurized isolation rooms have been utilized in various health care facilities to isolate the patients from active community contact. Several studies have highlighted isolation rooms improvement. However, limited knowledge is available regarding the isolation room facilities for pediatric intensive care units (PICU) to accommodate more than one pediatric patient. In this aspect, this study investigates a negative-pressurized isolation facility in PICU with minimal design modifications with the possibility that it can accommodate more than one pediatric patient. The field measurement tests were conducted to ensure the design compliance of Taiwan CDC. Then, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was further utilized to numerically evaluate the HVAC system role and the ventilation performance towards infection control. A protected air-jet curtain system with a new ventilation layout was proposed through this study to enhance the protection for both pediatric patients and medical staff. The concentration decay was monitored and recorded within 900 s to evaluate the performance. The concentration can be reduced to 504 ppm for case 1, 620 ppm for case 2, 501 ppm for case 3, and 486 ppm for case 4. In addition, the injected bioaerosol particles could be well diluted dealing with two patients presents a good performance. The results revealed that this proposed configuration could feasibly accommodate two patients with a significant contamination control to protect the medical staff and patients.