The Nebraska Biocontainment Unit (NBU), located at the Nebraska Medical Center, has shared its protocol for Ebola patient discharge, handling a patient’s body after death and environmental disinfection in the March issue of the American Journal of Infection Control, the official publication of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, according to an article on the FacilityCare website.

The NBU environmental decontamination of isolation unit protocol said that after discharge, the patient room is cleared of linen and solid waste by personnel in full PPE and the unit is sealed and left undisturbed for 48 hours while 15-19 high-efficiency particulate absorption-filtered air exchanges per hour flow throughout the unit to promote desiccation of Ebola, according to the article. 

Healthcare workers then decontaminate the unit via manual disinfection and ultraviolet germicidal irradiation. After this, the unit is deemed safe for entry without PPE.

“We acknowledge that our cleaning procedures go well beyond what is required to return the patient care area back to a safe environment,”  the study’s authors said. “However, given the morbidity and mortality of (Ebola) and the misinformation regarding the spread of the Ebola virus, our additional cleaning measures represent a cost-effective way to ensure safety and address public perception.”

Read the article.