Hospitals, despite themselves being the protagonists of this period of emergency, can become a safe place with a low risk of contagion. Deerns, an international consulting company that provides engineering services for the environment, has developed the COVID Transmission Risk Scan, an analysis tool that will be applied in the ISMETT 2 project, the new hospital built by Renzo Piano Building Workshop, which will be built in Carini (Palermo).
The tool can be applied to any health facility but also to all other intended uses of buildings that require the presence of occupants.
The method by which the scan is carried out makes it possible to quantify the risk of airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 because it crosses data not only on the ventilation and the number of people present in a room, but also on the level of activity that people practice in that given environment (ranging from sitting in silence, to strenuous exercise, in combination with a percentage of the time people talk). In fact, if the scan detects that the environment is not safe, a graph will show in real time how many people or for which consecutive activities it is possible to make the room safe.
The tool is based on various scientific sources relating to: aerial transmission of viruses 1,2,3, “quanta” emissions 4 and the transmission of viruses in interior spaces 5.
Cosimo Verteramo, managing director of Deerns Italia: “The information collected allows our experts to act to mitigate the risk of contagion, indicating how to change the occupancy times of the rooms and giving indications on how to obtain a more intelligent and effective ventilation regulation”.
Considering that many of the plants needed to reduce the risk of contagion consume a lot of energy, it is not indifferent that the approach proposed by Deerns allows savings of up to 30%.