Hard Rock Stadium is set to receive shipping containers that have been turned into decontamination units for personal protective equipment, including N95 masks.
The units will be staged east of the stadium in Miami Gardens, in the same area where a mobile testing site is up and running.
“We implemented early on in the process where whoever walks into our building is asked to wear a mask, and that’s been about the protection of not only others, but also yourself,” said Tony Gomez, CEO of Jackson North Medical Center.
Battelle, a research and development nonprofit in Ohio, developed the idea to use vaporized hydrogen peroxide to a blow a mist that settles on and cleans the masks hanging on a rack — some hospitals are using an in-house system to sterilize, but not to the scale offered by the company.
“We have explored internal options that we are using to be able to look at,” Gomez said. “We sanitize our current masks, but I’m not aware that we are looking at an outside unit as of right now.”
According to the company, the FDA-approved units can disinfect 80,000 N95 masks per day, allowing the equipment to be reused more than a dozen times if needed.
“We are identifying individuals and training them that will be deployed with these systems to operate them and to have them running 24/7,” Gomez said.
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The containers should be up and running this weekend with hospitals being able to start shipping shortly after — as for the cost, the Pentagon is spending $415 million for 60 of these units.
