Creating barriers to human-to-human exposure is crucial to preventing the novel coronavirus from spreading. Here comes the necessity of isolation centres.
How should an isolation centre exactly look like? The Institute of Architects Bangladesh (IAB) comes to the rescue as it has prepared design guidelines for isolation centres for treating suspected and confirmed Covid-19 patients.
The guidelines will help architects and healthcare professionals to quickly set up or transform an existing facility into an isolation centre, said a press release issued by the IAB recently.
The organisation completed preparing the 21-page document on April 15 and has already sent it to 34 government bodies.
Healthcare design expert Dr Nayma Khan, associate professor of the Department of Architecture at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), prepared the guidelines while a number of relevant experts reviewed the document.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the Covid-19 virus is primarily transmitted between people through respiratory droplets and contact routes.
Droplet transmission occurs when a person is in close contact (within 1 meter /3 feet) with someone who has respiratory symptoms (coughing or sneezing). Within this distance, he or she is at risk of being exposed to potentially infective respiratory droplets.
Transmission may also occur through fomites in the immediate environment around the infected person. The IAB design shows that the physical design of a hospital can minimise the risk of transmission of any infectious disease.
In an overcrowded health facility, the document said, it is difficult to maintain physical distancing in shared waiting areas and find a space to dedicate for isolation of suspected and confirmed cases. It can also happen that the capacity for patient beds in hospitals will fall short to handle the potential influx of coronavirus patients.
Due to limited resources, it is not possible to build a new hospital to handle the unpredictable condition. In such a situation, designing a makeshift isolation centre through the conversion of community buildings like a convention centre, stadium, and school, can help to treat more patients in this pandemic condition, as per the IAB document.
Only the critical patients can be treated in existing hospitals with ICU facility, added the document.
While preparing the guidelines, a number of issues were taken into consideration. Those include: the location and design of the isolation centre within an existing facility should ideally enable their isolation from the rest of the services; multiple isolation rooms should be clustered and located away from the main entrance of the department; isolation units should include ample space for ancillary and support services, such as circulation areas, clean and dirty utilities, separate toilet facilities for staff and visitors, etc; isolation units should include ample space for storage of patient care equipment, cleaning equipment, linen, waste, etc.
