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Pennsylvania Hospital Installs New Tech to Kill COVID

On the seventh floor of Wilkes-Barre General Hospital, Post Acute Medical Specialty Hospital CEO David Long recently showed new technology that is designed to kill COVID-19 and other airborne viruses.

Coronavirus Pandemic
ASSOCIATED PRESS
(TNS) — On the seventh floor of Wilkes-Barre General HospitalPost Acute Medical Specialty Hospital CEO  David Long  showed new technology that is designed to kill COVID-19 and other airborne viruses.

Long said the long-term acute care hospital is the first hospital in Northeast Pennsylvania to invest in Integrated Viral Protection's indoor biodefense system that has been proven to eliminate the airborne transmission of COVID-19 and control the indoor spread of the virus.

"It essentially draws in air from the hallway and it kills viruses on contact," he said. "It kills COVID upon contact in the system."

He said a heated HEPA filter in the system pulls in air from the hallway and it has been proven to have a 99.9% chance of destroying COVID-19.

"It kills all types of viruses as well through the heating element and the temperature in there. It gets up to high temperature and it's killed as soon as it goes through," he said. "Out the back end of it, it will put out a clean air product. Everything has been purified."

Scientists, engineers and leading innovators launched Integrated Viral Protection's indoor biodefense system and it was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The new equipment was placed in a hallway at Post Acute Medical Specialty Hospital where there is heavy foot traffic.

The staff calls the new equipment "Rosie" since it resembles the robot from The Jetsons.

Post Acute Specialty Hospital, which has been located inside Wilkes-Barre General Hospital since 2014, employs about 100 people, Long said.

After patients are discharged from Wilkes-Barre General HospitalGeisinger Wyoming Valley Medical Center in Plains Twp. and other hospitals with complex medical conditions and need a longer stay, he said they could be moved to Post Acute Medical Specialty Hospital.

The hospital within a hospital provides post-acute care services for patients who have recovered from COVID-19 and were discharged from the intensive care unit and may still be on ventilators, he said.

"They're still COVID-positive but they're not considered contagious. We take them and we finish their care up here," Long said. "They might still have respiratory pneumonia and they might be on ventilators and we wean them off the ventilators."

Post Acute Medical has invested more than $1 million to install the new cutting-edge technology and equipment in all its acute care and medical rehabilitation hospitals throughout the U.S. to provide a safe, clean and healthy environment for patients, staff and visitors, said  Jay Scott , a spokesman for Post Acute Medical.

Post Acute Medical provides post-acute care services at more than 40 long-term acute care and medical rehabilitation hospitals as well as several under development and 18 outpatient physical therapy locations in 13 states throughout the U.S.

Post Acute Medical is in the process of rolling out these systems into other hospitals across its network, Scott said.

(c)2021 The Citizens' Voice (Wilkes-Barre, Pa.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.