[News]The Generalitat will build five "satellite hospitals" for Covid cases

[SougarLord]

The Generalitat will begin next Tuesday the construction of five 'satellite hospitals', which will be attached to five large health centers, with a hundred beds each and a design designed to serve Covid patients, which will be in operation in 20 weeks, at the beginning of the year.

With a global budget of more than 50 million euros, the five satellite hospitals will be built together with the hospitals Parc Sanitari Pere Virgili (Barcelona), Arnau de Vilanova (Lleida), Hospital de Bellvitge (L'Hospitalet de Llobregat), Hospital Trias i Pujol (Badalona) and Hospital Moisès Broggi (Sant Joan Despí).

 

                                      

 

The design of these hospitals is novel, they have baptized it as I-COMPACT COVID and it allows, in addition to being built in a short period of between 18 and 20 weeks, to convert their beds into ICUs in just 24 hours and make their use moldable for other epidemics, use it for other health purposes when they are not necessary.

These are spaces annexed to the five hospitals, of about 4,000 square meters, with the capacity to hold a hundred beds each, reversible in 24 hours from conventional ICU to emergency ICU, or vice versa, depending on the needs.

 

The I-COMPACT COVID is an architectural model developed by the Catalan Health Service and PMMT Arquitectura, an office of architects that will also direct the projects to be built together with the Parc Sanitari Pere Virgili and the Arnau de Vilanova.

 

Works awarded directly

The Generalitat has awarded the construction of the five hospitals by the emergency procedure, without competition, with a price of 13.8 million euros -including VAT- in the case of Pere Virgili and 12.5 in the case of the Lleida hospital .

 

On Tuesday, the time trial begins to have these five I-COVID COMPACT ready in between 18 and 20 weeks: new buildings, with four floors, and with a maximum capacity of 108 ICU beds, since each floor, of 972 square meters as maximum, it can accommodate between 24 and 36 beds.

 

The founding partner of PMMT and director of projects and innovation, Patricio Martínez, explained to EFE that the construction could be done in about four months because a large part of the manufacturing will be carried out in workshops, so that it can be produced uninterruptedly for 24 hours and then move the ready-made items to the 'satellite hospital'.

 

In addition, these five annexes to hospitals can be used for other uses if the pressure of COVID-19 decreases or the virus is neutralized: they can be used as laboratories, day hospitals or research centers because they are thought and designed to be reversible.

But at first the 'satellite hospitals' will be prepared to fight against COVID-19, and therefore each ICU bed will have its oxygen point and will have a negative environmental pressure system.

 

Efficient models

This model annexed to hospitals also allows not having to incorporate X-ray machines, operating rooms or laboratories to analyze blood or perform PCR tests, since all this can be done in the reference hospital center. It is one of the reasons, in Martínez's opinion, why this I-COVID COMPACT model is more efficient than building a large hospital against the virus, as is being done in Madrid.

But the advantages are also other: the hospital medical staff can move quickly to the annex, making it easy to ensure that "the circuit" through which they must pass is safe, which will also lead to savings in consumables (mainly PPE).

 

Above all, Martínez is satisfied with the joint work carried out, in which he says that collaboration has predominated over the intrinsic competition that involves wanting to win a public contest. In this case, the project has been developed jointly by the office of architects, the administration and construction companies, so that, a priori, the usual obstacles are avoided during the construction process.

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