1.2 Ward settings
Hospital infection prevention and control standards for the intensive care unit require that each ICU bed area should be no less than 15 m2 and that the bed spacing should be greater than one meter (National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China, 2016). The original two general wards had 36 rooms, all of which were triple rooms with below-standard bed spacing. Therefore, the triple rooms were transformed into double rooms, which greatly increased the bed spacing to more than one meter. For infectious wards, negative airflow rooms are ideal. However, temporarily established ICUs were exempted from meeting this criterion so long as the ward was well-ventilated. Therefore, each ward was equipped with two exhaust fans on the windows (approximately one meter above the ground) for continuous ventilation, and the ventilation provided by each fan was ensured to be at least 160 L/s (World Health Organization, 2020b). We opened the doors and windows of the consultation room and temporary storage room directly behind the nurse working station so that the air flowed from the clean area to the polluted area and was finally discharged out of the window. Except for the ceiling of the contaminated ward in the West district, the ceilings of the other areas were all sealed with nonwoven fabrics to avoid collusion with the air. To meet the needs of large numbers of critical patients using oxygen at the same time, we increased the pressure of the central oxygen supply equipment in the ward. .