SOUTHWEST MIAMI-DADE, FLA. (WSVN) - The administrators of a newly opened clinic in Southwest Miami-Dade are among the hospitals in South Florida that are taking necessary steps to stop the spread of coronavirus if it comes to the area.
The staff at the Coral Gables Emergency Center, located along the 8600 block of Bird Road in Southwest Miami-Dade said they are prepared to treat patients who come in showing symptoms of the virus known as COVID-19.
Video of hospital staff covered in protective gear from head to toe, as well as stories of quarantines and travel restrictions have proliferated in the ongoing coronavirus crisis.
Dr. Luis Gutierrez Galatas showed a 7News crew the isolation room at the clinic, which opened its doors on Wednesday.
“Every hospital in the nation has to have a room that is the isolation room,” he said. “It’s a nice room. We have even have a television.”
Gutierrez Galatas, who has been the emergency medical director for Coral Gables Hospital for 40 years, said that while it may look like a regular room, it’s designed to battle an outbreak.
The doctor said this is the only room in the clinic where the air from inside doesn’t go right back out into circulation.
“It’s a negative pressure room, so the negativity of the room, what comes in doesn’t come out,” he said. “It’s a filter.”
Anyone placed there will stay until they’re transferred or deemed safe for release. Until that happens, the only people they will come in contact with will be covered in protective gear.
“Caps, goggles, masks, gowns and gloves,” said Gutierrez Galatas.
The gear is standard protocol in the effort to prevent the spread of airborne infectious diseases.
“It happened with Ebola, it happened with SARS, it happens with anything that we may think is contagious,” said Gutierrez Galatas.
The Coral Gables Emergency Center has one isolation room. Emergency rooms are required to have one, and hospitals typically have several.
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