Chambres à pression négative et gestion du risque épidémique

Airborne transmission of infectious diseases is now well known. Respiratory viruses are spread by coughing, spitting up, spitting or sneezing. Viral particles can stay suspended for several hours in the air. In the hospital environment, isolating patients with highly contagious respiratory pathologies in depressed rooms reduces the risk of cross-transmission. Strict compliance with protocols by healthcare professionals, in particular by wearing the appropriate mask, reduces the risk of transmission to caregivers. Establishments have developed units adapted to the management of these pathologies. In Marseille (France), the university hospital institute Mediterranean-infection constitutes an infectious center in which the architecture has been specially designed in order to anticipate the epidemic risk and the management of highly contagious pathologies in unit number 3 in which 25 individual rooms are present with negative pressure. The aim of this work is to show the operation of a unit entirely dedicated to the routine care of highly contagious pathologies and made up of depressed rooms but also its usefulness at the start of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak.