An UV disinfection robot combined cleaning and housekeeping strategy for the hospital during COVID-19 pandemic: How we protect the hospital cleaning staff?

摘要

Abstract Background The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic presents important infection control challenges for the health care facilities. Proper cleaning of the patient's room after the discharge of the patients is important to protect the housekeeping staff as well as other patients Methods In this study, we reviewed our experience with a novel multipurpose hybrid UV disinfecting and air disinfecting robot and the impact of it for preventing hospital cleaners getting occupational COVID-19 infection. Results Between 11, March 2020 and 11 December 2020, a total of 301 children with COVID-19 were hospitalized at the COVID-19 ward. The mean hospital stay was 3.77 ± 2.71 days (range from1 to 20 days) and total COVID-19 related-care. The mean working time was 9.4 ± 1.6 months (range 5 to 10 months). The total working hours for a month for one hospital cleaner was 196 to 204 hours per month. The total duration of the UVC-robot was 491 hours 33 minutes for fans and 473 hours 20 minutes for UV lamps. During the follow-up period, two of the hospital cleaners had definitively community-acquired COVID-19 infection, but none of them had symptomatic COVID-19 infection during the study period. Conclusions During the COVID-19 pandemic, none of the hospital cleaners got hospital-associated COVID-19 infection. The combination of personal protective equipment in addition to UVC-robot integrated environmental disinfection is an important strategy to protect health-care workers.