Personal ventilation hood for protecting healthcare workers from aerosol-transmissible diseases

Abstract

The surge in numbers of critically ill patients with COVID-19 can occur rapidly and challenge the finite burden of healthcare systems, especially the capacity of intensive care unit (ICU). Airborne infection isolation rooms with negative pressure are not universally available, particularly in resource-constraint countries. Moreover, the safety of the ICU practitioners' is compromised due to the shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) and extensive environmental contamination. Although the current evidence points towards droplet precaution [1] rather than the airborne transmission of COVID-19, concerns of nosocomial transmission in shared rooms remain, mainly when aerosol-generating procedures are performed [2], such as intubation. Moreover, transferring patients out of the ICU for investigations poses a considerable risk in contaminating the patient and the physicians and hospital healthcare workers.