A team of engineers, architects, medical staff, and experts has built a 60-foot trailer that now serves as the main test site for asymptomatic members of the MIT community who need to return to campus. “It really is an example of MIT at its best – groundbreaking innovation,” said MIT Medical Chief Brian Schuetz. In this photo, a person visits the MIT Medical trailer. Credit: Melanie Gonick, MIT
The facility is designed and assembled by experts from across the Institute, and should enable testing of up to 1,500 people per day.
In mid-March, in response to the exploding Covid-19 pandemic, MIT Medically set up test tents where essential workers and others staying on campus could be safely screened for the new coronavirus. In the tents, nurses and doctors donated nasal swabs while dressed in full personal protective equipment, such as PPE.
It soon became clear that in order to safely need medical workers on a daily basis to replenish their PPE regularly – a source in short supply, desperate supply. There was also the possibility that, when quenching all that PPE at the end of an eight-hour shift, a nurse could inhale the risk of infected particles that might be hanging on to dresses, surgical masks and face masks.
“One of the biggest challenges in Covid testing is [that] you put the person doing the tests at a not insignificant risk, “says Brian Schuetz, HR Manager at MIT Medical.
Weather conditions were also a challenge, as late northeastern late March threatened to raise the tents. Looking back at the hot summer months, Schuetz and his medical team knew that major adjustments needed to be made to improve the safety and comfort of both patients and staff.
“We made an early decision that we need to think differently about how we did things,” Schuetz says.
Over two months, he and experts from across campus worked impossible to design and build MIT’s latest test facility – a 60-foot trailer that now serves as the main test site for asymptomatic members of the MIT community who ‘ t have to return to campus.
Inside, the updated trailer has room for a check-in station and six test showers. Plastic partitions from floor to ceiling run the length of the trailer, keeping medical personnel on one side, and those being tested on the other. In each test bay, a tester on one side of the partition can fit her arms in large rubber gloves that extend to the other side so that she can perform a nose flush without either of them coming into physical contact.
The trailer is also equipped with an upgraded HVAC system, calibrated so that the air on opposite sides of the partitions will not mix. The two separate spaces in the trailer allow medical personnel to safely test people while wearing a simple surgical mask, instead of full PPE.
“The result is: the people behind that plastic are very safe,” Schuetz says. “If we can make our team comfortable and patients comfortable, we can help everyone be safer.”
The trailer began operating in early July, with the capacity to test up to 1,500 people per day. MIT’s group of system systems and technology cables the trailer to MIT’s Covid Pass system, allowing an MIT member to access campus facilities if they have tested negative for the coronavirus. The trailer is designated as a test site for asymptomatic members with access to the Covid Pass app.
The whole experience lasts about two minutes. The nasal swabs are analyzed at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and results are entered into the Covid Pass system; those who have been tested can check their results through the app.
“One of the biggest challenges in this whole effort was to figure out how to put all these different pieces together, and I think we’ve come up with a solution that works together to make the campus safe,” says Schuetz . “It really is an example of MIT at its best – groundbreaking innovation.”
A race against time
That buildup went awry when Schuetz first approached Elazer Edelman, director of the Institute of Medical Engineering and Science, looking for additional resources of PPE for the medical tents that were first used.
“And Elazer said, ‘Wait a minute – MIT is the best place in the world to find people who can do exactly what we want,'” recalls Martin Culpepper, professor of mechanical engineering and member of MIT’s government team on Covid’s production capabilities. 19.
That medical team refocused their vision to test the MIT community, not in tents with medical personnel in full PPE, but in a well-ventilated, weather-protected space.
Edelman affiliated with Culpepper, who attended the campus workshops for material resources and expertise. Meanwhile, Schuetz worked with the Department of Facilities to get two trailers.
“We order trailers for construction projects all the time, and it’s nothing out of the ordinary, except now that we’re in the middle of a pandemic, and there are not many trailers out there,” recalls Paul Murphy, director of specialization. projects in the Facility Campus Construction team. “But everyone stepped up and knew how important this was, and within four days we had two trailers that could normally last months with this kind of fit-out.”
Culpepper met with Tasker Smith, technical instructor in the mechanical engineering department, and Jennifer O’Brien, technical instructor in the architecture department, who together designed a test room designed for the larger 60-foot trailer, based on initials interviews with medical staff.
“The early stages were all about napkin sketches, cardboard, ribbon and bubblegum – what it takes to help you quickly change your mind about this thing,” says Smith.
O’Brien built a rough model of a test bay and invited several nurses and doctors to test it out.
“I have experience building custom furniture, I think there are needs that they will find that they have, that they will not think in advance,” recalls O’Brien. “I realized that, for example, based on the wide range of height and shoulder width testers, existing designs that were online at the time might not be comfortable for everyone.”
That they made a crucial adjustment for the final design, and built the gloves into an additional panel in each window of the bay that can be adjusted up and down to meet the height of a tester. The team then worked with Culpepper to obtain materials for the actual construction.
“At that time, the whole world realized that they would have to drill clear plastic to protect people who interact with each other, such as cashiers and students, so there was a big shrinkage,” O’Brien says. “We advised against the time, and had to renovate this thing and run as fast as possible, in order to manage a larger MIT population as soon as they started going back to campus.”
While she and Smith began building the physical layout of the trailer using campus construction crews, Culpepper worked with Facility engineers to optimize the trailer’s HVAC system.
“We did all sorts of calculations about how much air had to be turned around at any given moment, with the number of individuals that would occupy both sides of the trailer,” Murphy says.
The team designed a positive pressure HVAC system that pumps 700 cubic feet per minute of outdoor air through one side of the plastic partition of the trailer, in a way that keeps one side at positive pressure, and the other at negative pressure – a balance that prevents air on either side of mixing. A large, custom-made exhaust stack blows the air out about 12 feet above the trailer.
So far, about 4,000 people have been tested in the trailer. The ultimate goal is to test all members of the community working and living on campus up to twice a week, with the trailer as an important part of that strategy. However, Schuetz notes that the evolution of test technologies, medical guidance, and prevalence of Covid-19 in the broader Massachusetts community is likely to result in changes to the test strategy over the coming months.
Looking to a hopeful future, Schuetz suggests that the trailer could be configured for other purposes, such as people testing for antibodies, or even administering a vaccine.
“It’s not over now that it’s built,” adds O’Brien, who along with Smith is collecting a package of shareable specs for everyone for anyone interested in building similar facilities. “It remains a versatile design, and we still need it here on campus to update it.”
