TORONTO -- A Canadian company is helping to limit the coronavirus pandemic’s strain on the health-care system by turning old shipping containers into portable operating rooms and intensive care units.
Hamilton, Ont.-based Fero International customizes these containers into a variety of uses, depending on what their client wants. But as COVID-19 cases surge, the company has been using their innovations to help with front-line needs.
Inside the unit, the company has built a fully functioning hospital room that can be used for operations or act as an ICU, which the company believes will increase the number of patients that can be treated and can help avoid the cancellation of other hospital procedures.
“Our hope is that the deployment of these will allow hospitals to keep going so we don't have to shut down,” Fero International CEO Sabrina Fiorellino told CTV News.
While COVD-19 hospitalizations are down compared to the initial wave back in the spring, the fear remains that this second wave could still be just as deadly.
According to CTVNews.ca’s tracker of COVID-19 cases in Canada, there were 975 new cases of COVID-19 and 14 additional deaths on Monday, though several provinces did not report due to the Thanksgiving holiday.
Fero has also teamed up with the University Health Network in Toronto to make sure the units work up to doctors’ standards.
“This allows us to respond very quickly to a mass casualty event or a natural disaster event,” said Dr. Laura Hawryluck, a critical care medicine professor at the UHN.
The air pressure inside can be controlled to help protect the patient, and the air coming out of the units are filtered to prevent infecting people outside.
Fiorellino began the company as a way of giving back to the healthcare community after her mother’s life was saved with a double-lung transplant. Her brother and sister-in-law are also front-line workers.
Fiorellino said the units are transported to their destination by train or transport truck. Her vision is having units combined to create as many as 100 additional beds for hospitals in need of the extra capacity.
