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March 30, 2020 – Israel’s national hospital, Sheba Medical Center, Tel HaShomer is the first hospital in the world to open a coronavirus care unit specifically created for psychiatric inpatients who have contracted COVID-19. 
 
The goal of Sheba’s new coronavirus psychiatric unit is to protect all of Israel’s psychiatric inpatients by designating one central facility that will hospitalize and care for patients who have tested positive and may have difficulty following social distancing.  This tactic will decrease the chances of dangerous and quick infection of entire psychiatric wards around the country, as recently happened in a psychiatric hospital in South Korea.
 
“At any given time, there are 3,500 psychiatric patients hospitalized in Israel. By treating all psychiatric inpatients with coronavirus in one place, we can better ensure that lack of adherence to social distancing practices does not lead to widespread infection within psychiatric hospitals across Israel,” said Prof. Mark Weiser, head of the psychiatric division at Sheba. “Sheba was the optimal choice for this unit, since we have wards treating acute psychiatric inpatients in close proximity to a multitude of medical specialists. To the best of our knowledge this is the first unit in the world creating a safe haven for psychiatric patients during the coronavirus pandemic, and we are allocating top resources to ensure their safety. Given the behavioral disturbances affecting many psychiatric inpatients, the major challenge is to provide optimal psychiatric and medical care, with minimal exposure of staff to infection while minimally restricting patients’ freedom.”
 
In less than a week, intense building was done to adapt the unit for coronavirus patients. Steps included separating the air conditioning in this ward from the rest of the building and installing two-way television cameras in patients’ rooms to enable a constant flow of communication, also enabling therapeutic sessions as well as family visits.
 
Sheba’s new coronavirus psychiatric unit opened on the afternoon of March 26 and is one of many of Sheba’s multi-pronged strategies to minimize the spread of the coronavirus in Israel.  From the early start of the outbreak, Sheba was the first hospital in Israel appointed by the Ministry of Health to treat coronavirus patients and has led Israel’s fight against the pandemic ever since.
 
Sheba immediately set up an isolation compound away from the hospital campus that employs high-tech telemedicine tactics to dramatically decrease the chance of the contagious virus spreading among patients, medical staff and the Israeli population at large. Sheba also converted a parking garage into a Coronavirus Critical Care Unit in just five short days.
 
For more info contact the Alan Frent at the Florida Chapter of American Friends
Phone: (305) 469-2505
E-mail: alan@shebamedical.org
 
About Sheba Medical Center
Born together with Israel in 1948, Sheba Medical Center, Tel HaShomer is the largest and most comprehensive medical center in the Middle East. Sheba is the only medical center in Israel that combines an acute care hospital and a rehabilitation hospital on one campus, and it is at the forefront of medical treatments, patient care, research and education. As a university teaching hospital affiliated with the Sackler School of Medicine at Tel-Aviv University, it welcomes people from all over the world indiscriminately. For the past two years (2019 and 2020), Newsweek Magazine has named Sheba one of the top ten hospitals in the world. For more information, visit: eng.sheba.co.il