[BostonCard]

3) the best practices from the Mass hospitals was great, but one limitation is that hospitals are kind of fixed buildings, so it didn’t go as much into ventilation and shifting activities outside. You can’t do surgery on a sidewalk, but you can put dining tables, product displays and cash registers there.

More importantly, hospitals are designed from the ground up for infection control... though the Boston hospitals in which Atul works were designed eons ago.  MGH, especially, is a frankenmonster of different architectures, where you can take an elevator from one building to another one that was built on top of the first.  Still, hospitals have thought a lot about things like ventilation.  Long before COVID-19 came along, hospitals had negative pressure rooms to isolate patients with TB.  Contact precautions have been around a long time.  And PPE, while in short supply, is built for hospitals.  Regular workplaces, on the other hand, have been built for energy efficiency, rather than minimizing infection, so you see a lot of recirculated air, for example.

BC

[BostonCard]

3) the best practices from the Mass hospitals was great, but one limitation is that hospitals are kind of fixed buildings, so it didn’t go as much into ventilation and shifting activities outside. You can’t do surgery on a sidewalk, but you can put dining tables, product displays and cash registers there.

More importantly, hospitals are designed from the ground up for infection control... though the Boston hospitals in which Atul works were designed eons ago.  MGH, especially, is a frankenmonster of different architectures, where you can take an elevator from one building to another one that was built on top of the first.  Still, hospitals have thought a lot about things like ventilation.  Long before COVID-19 came along, hospitals had negative pressure rooms to isolate patients with TB.  Contact precautions have been around a long time.  And PPE, while in short supply, is built for hospitals.  Regular workplaces, on the other hand, have been built for energy efficiency, rather than minimizing infection, so you see a lot of recirculated air, for example.

BC