NEWPORT NEWS Va. - The Riverside Regional Medical Center of Newport News has added another ultraviolet (UV) germicidal irradiation machine as another precautionary effort to preserve the health, welfare and safety of the patients and staff.
“Riverside, long before the COVID-19 crisis, has been committed to the safety of its patients, families and team members,” Jim Pixler, Director of Environmental Services at Riverside Regional Medical Center said. “The acquisition of this additional machine underscores that commitment.”
Riverside’s newest UV light-cleaning machine is the Solaris Lytbot, which will join the Xenex Disinfection Services’ LightStrike™ pulsed xenon disinfection robots that the medical center has been using.
The UV light-cleaning robots are designated to add another level of sanitation to the cleaning the Riverside staff does. The machines use a programmed pattern of pulsed UV light to sweep and clean 360 degrees of a room.
The way both machines work is Riverside team members roll the machines into a hospital room or space that is getting cleaned and disinfected. The team member leaves the room while the machine is in operation because the UV rays are stronger than sunlight, meaning the robots could disable viruses, bacteria and spores where they are most vulnerable without damaging hospital materials or equipment.
“COVID-19 caused the world to stop in its tracks,” Dr. Mark Stibich, Chief Scientific Officer and co-founder of Xenex said. “Our robots have been adopted as the environmental standard of care by many of the world’s leading hospitals because they work — and they work very quickly.”
Earlier this year, Riverside announced that in an effort to conserve personal protective equipment (PPE) for health care workers amid the nationwide shortage and supply chain disruption caused by COVID-19, the health system had begun using the machines to clean and reprocess N95 respirators.
