Hospitals

Coltraco Ultrasonics’ Portascanner COVID-19 precise leak detection system brings a non-invasive answer to ‘patch and hope’ measure, and, with minimal training, allows healthcare and pharmaceutical personnel to locate, and then quantify, the leaks in hospital wards, cleanrooms, and sterilisation departments.  Portascanner® COVID19, prevent infection contagion from negatively-pressurised NHS Hospital ICU Wards by identifying and quantifying leak-sites, calculating the air flow rates and generating the air permeability factor concerned

A December 2020 study on COVID-19 and air contamination indicates that 56% of air samples taken from hospital hallways, and 24% from hospital bathrooms, have high levels of Coronavirus (JAMA Network Open).

And samples from ICU rooms were more than twice as likely to be positive, at a rate of 25.2% compared to 10.7% for non-ICU rooms.

• In intensive care units (ICU), for example, the NHS has to ‘negatively pressurise’ each ICU ward to prevent COVID-19 infection contagion within the rest of the hospital.
• However, if the air permeability of ICU wards is not sufficiently low, negative pressurisation cannot be achieved effectively.
• But the methods presently being undertaken to verify air permeability, are disruptive, costly, and do not allow operators to identify specific areas of leakage.
• And maintenance teams have limited means to monitor the airflow that sustains negative or positive pressurisation, or identify the location and size of any specific leaks, leaving any remedial action down to mere speculation.
• So limited are these means that healthcare personnel are forced to adopt an approach that can only be described as ‘patch and hope’.

Sufficient airtightness is required to facilitate good ventilation and filtration practices, so that ‘safe working’ conditions be achieved, which is at the heart of improving the ‘health’ of a building.

And Portascanner COVID19 can be used regularly by in-house maintenance teams when required, with no disruption, enabling leaks to be detected and remedied as they occur.