Negative Pressure ICU

Negative pressure rooms, also called isolation rooms, are a type of hospital room that keeps patients with infectious illnesses, or patients who are susceptible to infections from others, away from other patients, visitors, and health care staff. They are a common method of infection control and are used to isolate patients with contagious, airborne diseases such as measles, tuberculosis, SARS, MERS, and COVID-19.

How do negative pressure rooms work?

They are called negative pressure rooms because the air pressure inside the room is lower than the air pressure outside the room. This means that when the door is opened, potentially contaminated air or other dangerous particles from inside the room will not flow outside into non-contaminated areas. Instead, non-contaminated filtered air will flow into the negative pressure room. Contaminated air is sucked out of the room with exhaust systems, which are built with filters that clean the air before it is pumped outside of and away from the healthcare facility.