Fig 1.
Typical patient room showing locations of built environment sensors and microbial sampling sites.
Sketch of a typical patient room in the hospital. Green shaded areas show microbiological sampling sites; areas circled in blue show locations of the building science measurements sites used herein. The nurse stations, although not pictured, were centrally located to the right of the figure (in the gray area).
Table 1.
Summary statistics for all parameters measured within all 10 patient rooms and two nurse stations at 5-minute intervals.
Table 2.
Summary statistics for all parameters measured at 5-minute intervals in mechanical rooms.
Fig 2.
Weekly averages of environmental conditions in the patient rooms and nurse stations measured over the duration of the project: (a) temperature, (b) relative humidity, (c) humidity ratio, and (d) illuminance.
Rooms 101–105 are on the 9th floor; rooms 201–205 are on the 10th floor. Room 100 and 200 are the nurse station locations on the 9th and 10th floor, respectively. Weeks are counted from the week of hospital opening (i.e., week 0). White areas represent missing values. Values along the x-axes correspond to room identification numbers. Examples time series data at 5-min intervals for one day are shown in S5 Fig.
Fig 3.
Distribution dot plots for four measured environmental conditions in the hospital: (a) hourly average air temperature, (b) hourly average relative humidity, (c) hourly average humidity ratio, and (d) daily average illuminance levels.
Rooms 101–105 are on the 9th floor; rooms 201–205 are on the 10th floor. Room 100 and 200 are the nurse station locations on the 9th and 10th floor, respectively. The horizontal black bar represents the median hourly values (only daily averages are provided in part (d) for better graphical clarity).
Fig 4.
Surrogates for daily human occupancy and activity: (a) daily total IR bream-break counts and (b) daily average room-source CO2 concentrations.
Rooms 101–105 are on the 9th floor; rooms 201–205 are on the 10th floor. The horizontal black bar represents the median daily values
Fig 5.
Estimated daily average room-source CO2 measurements and daily total IR beam-breaks in the patient rooms.
Rooms 101–105 are on the 9th floor; rooms 201–205 are on the 10th floor. Room 100 and 200 are the nurse station locations on the 9th and 10th floor, respectively. Pearson correlation coefficients are shown. All ten correlations are statistically significant at p < 0.001. Headings above each graph correspond to patient room numbers.
Fig 6.
Variations between floors for hourly average air temperature, relative humidity, humidity ratio, illuminance, and room CO2 concentration, as well as hourly total IR beam-breaks.
Box plots display median values in the center, bounded by the interquartile range in gray and extreme values at top and bottom. Figures exclude outlier values for clarity.
Fig 7.
Variations between nighttime and daytime periods for hourly average air temperature, humidity ratio, illuminance, room CO2 concentration, and outdoor air fraction, as well as hourly total IR beam-breaks.
Box plots display median values in the center, bounded by the interquartile range in gray and extreme values at top and bottom. Figures exclude outlier values for clarity.