Back in 2014 when there was an ebola outbreak in the United States, some of us were fearing the worst.
I remember going to work everyday wondering whether or not the CDC could contain the outbreak after the first person was caught entering the country with ebola on an international flight.
I had nightmares for several weeks about catching ebola and passing it to family members, although in retrospect this was probably illogical at the time. As we eventually learned, ebola isn’t nearly as easy to transmit as other epidemic-causing viruses because it is not airborne. Despite this, the CDC wasted no time putting the ebola patient in an isolated hospital room that has no cross ventilation with any other rooms in the building. In fact, many hospitals already had these rooms in place for special cases of particularly infectious diseases. They have isolated heating and cooling systems, as well as powerful air purifiers and sanitization machines. They’re especially important if the infectious disease is airborne in any capacity. When COVID-19 suddenly swept across the entire world, isolated wards and rooms became essential in hospitals that treat patients of the virus. You can’t use a ward that has central air conditioning shared with other rooms within the hospital. This is why in some cases these HVAC-isolated wards had to be built after the fact. The hospitals hired building contractors to create additions to their campuses to handle the transfer of patients who came down with the virus either inside or outside of the hospital. My local hospital doesn’t even allow COVID patients in the emergency room. You’re immediately sent to an isolated wing that can only be accessed from outdoors.