Piacenza hospital chooses the Sanitary Gate disinfection tunnels for its Covid-19 safety plan
The tunnels manufactured by the Ferrara-based company Giulio Barbieri Srl were supplied by Class, a company from Budrio (Bologna, Italy), specialising for over twenty years in the environmental and microbiological control of operating units in the hospital and healthcare sector.
"We realised that the measures we have in place to stop the spreading of Covid-19, such as personal protective equipment and social distancing, could be strengthened by further mass protection devices such as disinfection tunnels," says Dr Franco Pugliese, Director of the hospital's Safety Department "Nowadays, many people decide against going to the hospital for fear of being infected and for us it is of primary importance to re-establish a peaceful relationship with our patients, doing everything we can to ensure safety and efficiency of the services we provide".
During the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic last spring, Giulio Barbieri Srl was one of the companies to convert its production to offer devices to fight the contagion: the retractable tunnels that it used to supply to the world's most prestigious football teams have been transformed into disinfection tunnels with an integrated spraying system.
After a long period of research and development in collaboration with major chemical companies in the field, it was able to offer Drop 360, a disinfectant liquid effective in reducing the viral load present on surfaces by 99% in just 5 seconds, without causing harm to humans.
The Piacenza hospital is the first hospital in Italy to install these disinfection tunnels on its premises. Apart from the first disinfection tunnel located outside by the A&E, the other tunnels have been installed inside the hospital at the inpatient departments and the intensive care unit.
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"After a careful analysis conducted together with the hospital's prevention team and the technical office, we identified the strategic points for the placement of these disinfection tunnels to stop people from spreading the virus from one department to another", says Dr Franco Federici, Director of Hospital Hygiene “The virus can spread simply through contact and it is very easy for operators' clothing to become contaminated when in contact with patients affected by Covid-19. Hence the importance of sanitising all surfaces before leaving a high-risk ward, and that's exactly what the Sanitary Gate disinfection tunnels do. In addition, the ‘disinfection shower’ increases the safety of individual operators, as at the end of the shift they have the possibility of sanitising their personal protective equipment before removing it, which helps avoid direct contact with potentially contaminated surfaces."
The Class company from Budrio has carefully studied the needs expressed by the hospital technicians: "To offer a definitive solution and guarantee maximum safety, we asked our partner Giulio Barbieri Srl to modify their tunnel by integrating a second pair of photocells to activate the spraying automatically when people pass through, not only when entering, but also as they leave high-risk departments", says Filippo Baravelli, CEO of Class "Monitor, understand, improve. This is our mission in three words. To address this emergency, we need an action plan that includes a number of key elements: ensuring the protection of health workers, maintaining the operation of the health system, reducing morbidity and mortality among infected people and, finally, minimising the transmission of pathogens between different departments. We are honoured and proud to have been a part of this important project through the creation of the areas for strategic filtering and total disinfection, capable of guaranteeing safe access to the facilities of the Piacenza hospital network. We thank our partner Giulio Barbieri Srl for allowing us to respond efficiently and quickly to the specific needs of our client".
The Local Health Unit of Piacenza is, as we said, the first to install the Sanitary Gate on its premises.
Given the critical state of the national health system that emerged especially during the current second wave of Coronavirus, the hope is that this virtuous example will be promoted and that it will bring other Italian hospitals to include in their action plans against the pandemic, in addition to measures of standard prevention, also the more innovative and effective solutions such as the Sanitary Gate disinfection tunnel.
