COVID-19 Aerosol and Droplet Suppression Cabinets to Protect Health Care Workers During Intubation [Funder: Genome BC, Conconi Family Foundation]

When patients experience difficulty breathing independently, health care workers may intubate in order to maintain air flow. Intubating a COVID-19 patient suffering respiratory distress presents a significant risk of infection to the intubating doctors and nurses. Placing a transparent shield between the patient and medical staff would reduce exposure to infectious droplets. This project will rapidly develop an intubation cabinet design and manufacture sufficient quantities to immediately reduce risk for physicians performing intubation in BC. Their simple design method holds tremendous promise for protecting critical ICU/emergency staff during the COVID-19 pandemic. Perhaps the most significant impact will be in low-resource settings: this solution can be readily manufactured using a variety of fabrication technologies from readily available materials. The timeline to the first delivery is approximately one week and physicians are currently planning testing with patients on elective (non-COVID-19) procedures. The team will continue to innovate (adding negative pressure for aerosol control, adding germicidal UV to deactivate COVID aerosol) and test with medical and infection control teams at Vancouver hospitals. In the longer term, this protective cabinet could serve as an important barrier during the many aerosol generating procedures (dentistry, non-elective, and especially ear, nose and throat surgeries) that will need to be reworked to mitigate potential exposure to the practitioners. This project will also provide extensive related training materials to establish a foundation for engineers, designers, and manufacturers to rapidly meet evolving needs.