Hospitals were being pushed to the brink. With coronavirus cases surging across the country, many faced a shortage of beds to care for patients.
But some cities came up with a plan: convert thousands of empty hotel rooms into makeshift quarters for low-acuity patients, a move that would help free up badly needed space in hospitals overwhelmed by severe cases of COVID-19.
The strategy required more than simply transferring patients to other buildings. The ventilation and air-cleaning systems for some of those temporary spaces needed to be upgraded to reduce the risk of airborne transmission of the virus.
Eventually, those rooms went back to being hotel lodgings. But during their brief stints as quarters for the quarantined, their conversion helped raise a very important question: Are sufficient codes being implemented in new and existing construction to ensure that the built environment can help minimize the impacts of the next pandemic?
A University of Miami researcher, through his participation on a new task force, is helping to answer that question and others.
“Among the many things we’ve learned during this pandemic is that the way buildings are designed and laid out can actually have a considerable impact on the health and safety of its occupants,” said Esber Andiroglu, an associate professor of practice in the Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering in the University’s College of Engineering.
Last year, the Washington, D.C.-based International Code Council (ICC) tapped him to serve on a joint task force on pandemics with the National Environmental Health Association (NEHA). The unit’s goals: Investigate the effects of the pandemic on the built environment, develop a roadmap, and propose resources—including guidelines, recommended practices, publications, and updates to international building codes—to overcome the myriad challenges pandemics pose to constructing safe, sustainable, and affordable structures.
“Our intent is to analyze and study all possible code proposals and to revise them if necessary,” Andiroglu explained.
The task force’s recommendations, he reported, could potentially be adopted by the ICC and included in the agency’s 2027 edition of the International Building Code, a uniform code used by most jurisdictions in the U.S. that maintains public health and safety and provides safeguards from hazards associated with man-made structures.
While public health experts expect the SARS-CoV-2 virus to become endemic, circulating at much lower levels and resulting in fewer hospitalizations and deaths, “future pandemics are inevitable, and like the health care sector, the building and construction industry has to be prepared for them,” Andiroglu pointed out.
That preparation has already started with the ICC-NEHA task force on which he serves. It is broken down into multiple committees addressing different challenges. An architecture and structures committee, for example, is reviewing codes for buildings that are permanently converted to facilities such as health care or testing sites.
“Every time any building is designed, there should be something in the code that addresses the potential for a future, permanent conversion like a school being turned into a hospital,” he said. “So, from the initial design stage of a structure, certain elements would be integrated that would make a switch from one type of occupancy or activity to another go much smoother as opposed to doing a conversion you may not be prepared for.”
That committee will also look at codes regulating surfaces installed in buildings. When the COVID-19 pandemic began, concerns grew that the virus, in addition to being transmitted primarily via respiratory droplets, could also be spread by touching infected surfaces, leading some consumers to wipe down grocery store items and disinfect parcels.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention allayed those fears, saying that the risk of transmission through contact with contaminated surfaces or objects, while possible, is generally low.
“But the initial thought process was to start disinfecting and wiping down all surfaces, which carries the possibility of causing the mutation of typical bacteria that existed,” Andiroglu explained. “Now, there’s the potential for next-generational bacteria that none of our wipes or disinfectants are effective against. So, we’re looking at codes on how surfaces should be installed.”
He noted the current practice in hospital construction in which walls and floors are constructed with curved finishes near the baseboards to minimize the likelihood of bacteria accumulating in cracks.
Andiroglu chairs the task force’s mechanical, electrical, and plumbing committee that is studying codes on everything from heating and ventilation systems to air sensors, lighting, and wastewater disposal.
“We have always had sensors in the built environment that help regulate the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. And based on the CO₂ content, we regulate how much fresh air we introduce into the built environment to purify the air. Traditionally, we focused primarily on CO₂, but because of the pandemic, we’re now interested in a lot more chemicals.”
He highlighted College of Engineering Dean Pratim Biswas’s work in aerosol science and the development of air quality sensors to detect, track, and help prevent transmission of the coronavirus. Droplets from the SARS-CoV-2 virus can remain in the air for hours after an infected person speaks, coughs, sneezes, or breathes, with some of those droplets traveling more than six feet from the source, Biswas’s research has shown.
“So, adjusting air velocity from air-conditioning grilles to make sure that air moves faster is something we’re looking at,” Andiroglu said.
The researcher also called attention to the work of Helena Solo-Gabriele, a professor in the Department of Chemical, Environmental, and Materials Engineering, who is studying how wastewater can be used to help predict coronavirus outbreaks. “In fact, there are already sensors that have been developed just for that purpose,” he said. “Some have been proposed to be adopted into code. And it’s our job to validate them.”
Meanwhile, a committee on temporary operations is reviewing what codes, beyond ventilation-system upgrades implemented at local governmental levels, would need to be instituted in makeshift hospital and testing facilities. “What if, for example, the Miami Beach Convention Center were converted into a temporary pandemic hospital? How would we regulate such as a massive operation?” Andiroglu asked.
He and the other task force members face their own set of challenges, most notably recommending the use of certain practices that will increase energy demands and carbon emissions. “Public health is paramount,” he said, “so it’s a challenge we’ll need to address, perhaps through technological innovations.”
Meeting virtually a few times a month, Andiroglu and the other task force members hope to complete a first draft of best practices by late April.
