RESUMO
The Covid-19 virus pandemic is leading to a large number of deaths. There are forecasts that there will be an exponential increase in the number of such deaths across the globe because of this deadly virus. To arrest the spread of the virus in this situation, the supply of medical materials including PPE and body bags (also known as human remains pouch or cadaver bag) should be designed to stop the spread of the Covid-19 virus. Conventional body bags have shortcomings, which need to be addressed by a refined redesigning and use of appropriate materials to adequately match the requirements in the current Covid-19 situation. Current designs of the body bags do not allow the family member's sentiments towards the deceased and to cater to the desire of the family members to view the face of the deceased without exposing them to a strong possibility of infection from the cadaver. This is, therefore, a very traumatic experience to the family and in many cases, the cadaver is not handled with respect due to the unavailability of safe design body bags, which also exposes health workers to avoidable risk from the infections. Technopark@iitk has proposed an integrated 5-layer body bag to tackle this situation for Covid-19 deceased such that it is (1) leak-proof, (2) impermeable/water-proof, (3) strong enough for the purpose, (4) ergonomically designed, and (5) has provision to view the face of the dead body for family viewing before cremation/burial. This new design would keep the handling of the deceased body to a minimum during transportation from the hospital/site of death to a mortuary, and then to the home of the deceased/burial ground/crematorium, where it may be disposed-off along with the body in it, in a respectable manner, without putting people involved to the risk of infection.
RESUMO
This paper describes a robust autonomous disinfection tunnel to disinfect external surfaces of COVID-19 virus such as clothes and open body sections in public places such as airports, office complexes, schools, and malls. To make the tunnel effective and highly efficient, it has been provided with two chambers with three disinfection processes. Due to the multiple processes, the possibility of neutralizing the virus is quite high and higher than other solutions available at this point for this purpose. Chamber 1 sprays the solution of a disinfectant on the person. This solution can be either a dilute solution of approved chemical or any Ayurvedic/herbal disinfectant. Once the person enters chamber 2, he/she is exposed to hot air at 70 °C along with far-ultraviolet C rays (207-222 nm). Both chambers function autonomously by detecting a person in a chamber using ultrasonic sensors. The proposed tunnel is developed under industry-academia collaboration jointly by Technopark@iitk and ALIMCO under the ambit of the Ministry of Human Resources Development and the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, respectively. The tunnel is referred to as the 'Techno Advanced Disinfection Tunnel' (TADT).
