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Carlo Ratti and Jacobs team design shipping container hospitals for Covid-19 sufferers

A team including Italian architect Carlo Ratti Associates, US engineer Jacobs, healthcare institutions and European bank UniCredit has created an open-source design for intensive care units using repurposed shipping containers.

The CURA team says the containers can be connected by an inflatable corridor, and could be constructed over a few hours. It adds that these "plug-in biocontainment pods" could be built on hospital grounds or used to create a temporary field hospital. A prototype is presently being built at a healthcare facility in Milan.

Each pod will contain ventilators able to treat two intensive-care coronavirus patients, and are aimed at countries whose healthcare system is being overloaded by a surge in demand. Death rates from Covid-19 typically climb steeply in countries such as Italy or Spain where this has occurred.

The units meet the health standards for Covid-19 hospitals issued by the Chinese authorities by, for example, using an extractor to create negative air pressure and prevent air-borne infection.

Further information can be found here (https://curapods.org/).

Images courtesy of CURA

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