SunMed built negative-pressure rooms, cabins and isopods to combat Covid-19

20 June 2020

Article by: Wan Rezal Ismail, Corporate Communications
Facts approved by: Dr Low Kwai Siong, Head of A&E Department

Sunway Medical Centre implemented negative-pressure rooms, cabins and isopods to contain the spread of Covid-19.

What measures have Sunway Medical Centre undertaken to lessen COVID-19 exposure?
First of all, we’ve created the negative pressure rooms. We have these negative pressure rooms in our A&E, ICU, and also we’re planning to get two more cabins which are negative pressured to put in front of A&E to treat all these patients.

Negative pressure rooms meaning that the pressure inside the room is actually negative. In this way, whenever we enter the room or this setting, the virus will still be contained inside the room and will not spread out to all other patients. Isopod is also another negative pressure pod that we can help to keep the patient inside.

So, meaning that, when we have a COVID-19 patient, a suspected patient, when we put [the patient] inside here, we on the switch and it will create a negative pressure. By this way, we’re hoping that the virus will be contained inside the Isopod and prevent it from spreading to other patients, relatives, or also healthcare workers.

Ideally, we are hoping that all hospitals in Malaysia will have this standard Isopod, so we can transfer all those suspected COVID-19 patients from our hospital to the government hospital if they need further treatment and also management.
How are the isopods and negative pressure rooms cleaned?
So, after usage, every time after usage, how we clean it is that there’s a special alcohol disinfectant that we can wipe on the outer layer and for the inner layer we have what we call a smoke bomb.

We press the button [of the smoke bomb] and put it inside and the whole thing will be like a smoke bomb for about 30 minutes.

After that, once the smoke is gone, we can just open up [the Isopod] and just wipe down the rest of it.
What are the other measures taken besides creating the negative pressure rooms, cabins, and isopods?
Our main priority is always full PPE. PPE stands for Personal Protective Equipment, it means we have the personal isolation gown, the mask, the face shield, head cover, gloves and all these kinds of things. All of these are important, regardless of where you are. For healthcare workers, this is our mainstay.

Our main priority to protect ourselves and prevent us from getting the disease, and prevent us from spreading the disease, the virus, to other people.

We also built the tent to make sure that all those patients who are suspected Covid-19 patients will be placed in a special place and we’ll have a good treatment for them.

At the same time, those other patients who have all the other conditions like heart attack, asthma, dengue fever and all these kinds of things will be admitted to our hospital via the proper channel and their protected and safe.