Garbí Building

It is one of the five multi-purpose spaces that the Catalan Health Service commissioned to be built in mid-September in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The spaces will serve, in the short term, to treat coronavirus patients, but they are also conceived to be useful in the future.

It covers 3,111 square metres spread across four floors. Each one spans 777 square metres, and is equipped with the same technology as the hospitalisation wards and Intensive Care Unit of the Vall d’Hebron General Hospital. The aim is for the Garbí Building to treat all of the Covid-19 patients who arrive at Vall d’Hebron Barcelona Hospital Campus. At full capacity, the centre will have 320 members of staff, who will form part of the Vall d’Hebron University Hospital healthcare team.

Two hospitalisation floors

The first and second floors are conceived to host acute patients who have been admitted to hospital due to Covid-19. They have the capacity to admit up to 56 patients, 28 on each floor, and depend on the Infectious Diseases and Pneumology Departments of Vall d’Hebron University Hospital.

The rooms are spacious and bright, as the construction takes advantage of the centre’s privileged location to allow natural light to flood in, and can accommodate two, three or five patients. All patients will have access to tablets, which they can use to contact family members and make their stay more pleasant.

The facilities have been specially designed, taking into account the circuits and prevention and isolation measures for Covid-19 patients and the safety of healthcare staff.

A diaphanous ICU for critical and semi-critical patients

The Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is located on the third floor. This is a diaphanous space with 32 beds for critical patients which is managed by the Intensive Care Medicine Department of Vall d’Hebron General Hospital. The healthcare staff of the Pneumology Department will treat the semi-critical patients on this floor.

This ICU has a nurse station, and is also connected to the ICU of Vall d’Hebron General Hospital for patient monitoring purposes. In this way, the patients are monitored through a nurse station that shares real-time information with the ICU at Vall d’Hebron General Hospital.

This smart ICU, which was inaugurated in 2018, is equipped with the most advanced technology and connected to the Smart Display: a program that integrates clinical and safety data, transforming it into information that facilitates decision-making by the healthcare staff.  

Laboratory for PCR tests and CAT scans

The extraction room and laboratory, which is capable of analysing between 4,500 and 5,000 PCR tests a day, are located on floor 0. It has been in operation since 8 February 2021 and is headed by the Microbiology Department of Vall d’Hebron University Hospital. For safety reasons, patients due to undergo extractions must wait outside until it is their turn.

The extraction rooms also have negative air pressure. This means that when a person undergoes a PCR test, the air in the room remains within it and does not go outside, thus minimising the risk of other people becoming infected.

This floor also has a computed tomography (CAT) machine, which is managed by the Vall d’Hebron Diagnostic Imaging Institute (IDI). CAT scans are highly useful in the diagnosis and follow-up of critically-ill Covid-19 patients, as they allow for the detection of pneumonia in the lungs or other complications such as pulmonary embolisms.