New Negative Pressure Rooms Available at Citizens Medical Center

Good news for COVID patients in Victoria County as Citizens Medical Center has announced it now has 78 negative pressure rooms to care specifically for COVID patients. Negative pressure rooms can also be used for flu and influenza patients as an example.

You might be wondering what 'negative pressure rooms' are and how they pertain to COVID patients.

In negative pressure rooms, a machine is used to pull air into the room and then filters it before moving it outside. It's the filters that really make the difference as the air is cycled through HEPA filters 12 times per hour. The air inside a negative pressure room is not circulated back through the hospital's main air vents. In these rooms, the air is vented out of windows that have been removed.

The conversion of negative pressure rooms also coincided with Citizen's Medical Center also receiving 16 health care workers from the state to cope with the recent demand of COVID patients.

Currently, there are a reported 50 patients with COVID-19 at Citizens at this time.

To learn more about negative pressure rooms click here.