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The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted two major weaknesses in hospital infrastructure. Firstly, it revealed how poorly equipped hospitals are to stop the spread of pathogens in the air. This was evident by the high incidence of COVID-19 infections among healthcare workers; at points during the pandemic, one in three confirmed cases in Ireland were healthcare workers. And secondly, it revealed how inefficient hospital decontamination protocols are. We saw this through the impact that additional room cleaning requirements had on hospital workflow. For example, arising from a need to decontaminate treatment rooms on a frequent basis, radiology departments reported a 50% reduction in scans during periods of the pandemic.

At the core of the problem is that hospital disinfection remains dependent on manual cleaning methods that are known to be time consuming, inefficient, and hazardous to the health of environmental services workers. For illustration, the time to disinfect a radiology treatment room was reported to be in the region of 30-60 minutes during the pandemic. Considering that a typical radiology scan takes 10 minutes to perform, this had a dramatic effect on the number of patients that could be treated each day. Factors contributing to this time included waiting for cleaners to arrive, the time to prepare the cleaning solution, the time to manually administer the solution, and then the time to allow the cleaning agent to dry, which is normally 10 minutes. Manual disinfection has known reliability issues. Since germs are too small to see with the naked eye, the cleaner cannot easily tell the parts of the room where contamination levels are greatest, and they simply do not have the time or ability to disinfect everywhere to the same extent. Also, the efficacy of the chemical agent is affected by several factors including the surface material, the concentration or wetness of the chemical at the surface, and the genetic structure of the microorganism. Studies conducted on the efficacy of manual cleaning suggest that it may only be effective at removing just over 50% of the target pathogens.

Cleaning chemicals are toxic and they are known to cause harm if exposed directly to skin or eyes. When mixed with water, as is the standard practice in hospitals, they also produce a poisonous gas which is linked with respiratory illnesses. Research has found that environmental services staff are disproportionally more likely to develop asthma and other respiratory illnesses due to this occupational exposure. Furthermore, these chemicals are known to be especially harmful to the environment, especially when they enter waterways through the sewerage system. Current Technologies Devices that use ultraviolet light have emerged as a potential solution to this problem. At certain wavelengths in the ultraviolet spectrum, light is known to have germ killing properties. However, since these devices required must be pushed into place and can only be used in rooms that were empty (because direct exposure to UV light can be dangerous), there use necessitates additional staffing and they lack the ability to reduce room downtime.