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At dawn one bright April morning, dozens of construction workers, clad in bright yellow vests and stiff white masks, lined up to applaud those entering and leaving UVA Health at shift change, men and women on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a touching moment, made more poignant by what stood, gleaming in the morning light, behind the workers – a new, six-story inpatient hospital tower. The tower, which has been six years in the making, was scheduled to open in June and house, among other things, three floors with a cardiac intensive care unit, a musculoskeletal and orthopedic floor, and a special unit for solid organ transplants. Now, thanks to quick thinking and immense effort by the design team and construction crews and a huge team of staff across UVA Health, those floors are devoted to COVID-19 patients, with 56 of the 84 patient rooms specially retrofitted as “negative airflow” rooms. Those rooms, which suck air in rather than pushing it out, are ideal for treating patients with airborne infectious diseases like COVID-19 because they keep the virus from spreading into public spaces, and allow staff to conserve valuable personal protective equipment. Read more.