1.2 Ward settings
Hospital infection prevention and control standards for the intensive
care unit require that each ICU bed area should be no less than 15
m2 and that the bed spacing should be greater than one
meter (National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China,
2016). The original two general wards had 36 rooms, all of which were
triple rooms with below-standard bed spacing. Therefore, the triple
rooms were transformed into double rooms, which greatly increased the
bed spacing to more than one meter. For infectious wards, negative
airflow rooms are ideal. However, temporarily established ICUs were
exempted from meeting this criterion so long as the ward was
well-ventilated. Therefore, each ward was equipped with two exhaust fans
on the windows (approximately one meter above the ground) for continuous
ventilation, and the ventilation provided by each fan was ensured to be
at least 160 L/s (World Health Organization, 2020b). We opened the doors
and windows of the consultation room and temporary storage room directly
behind the nurse working station so that the air flowed from the clean
area to the polluted area and was finally discharged out of the window.
Except for the ceiling of the contaminated ward in the West district,
the ceilings of the other areas were all sealed with nonwoven fabrics to
avoid collusion with the air. To meet the needs of large numbers of
critical patients using oxygen at the same time, we increased the
pressure of the central oxygen supply equipment in the ward. .