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Recent events concerning H1N1 "swine flu", have demonstrated to the world the significant
potential of rapid increases in death and illness among all age groups and even among the
healthy population [1] when a highly infectious influenza virus is introduced. In terms of mass
casualties due to a pandemic, preparedness and response planning must be done. One course of
action to prevent a pandemic outbreak or reduce the impact of a bioterrorist event is the use of
isolation or quarantine facilities. The first level of isolation or quarantine is within the personal
residence of the person exposed or infected. In the case where, the specific virus is extremely
contagious and its onset of symptoms is rapid and severe, there will be a need for the deployment
and setup of larger self contained quarantine facilities. Such facilities are used to house
infectious individuals to minimize the exposure of susceptible individuals to contagious
individuals, especially when specialized care or treatment is required and during the viral
shedding period (5 to 7 days). These types of facilities require non-shared air conditioning,
heating and ventilating systems where 100% of air is vented to the outside through a series of
disinfection systems and staged filters. Although chemical disinfection is possible, there is a
desire to incorporate intense UV radiation as a means to deactivate and disinfect airborne virus
within hospital settings and isolated mass scale quarantine facilities. UV radiation is also being
considered for disinfection of contaminated surfaces, such as table tops, walls and floors in
hospitals and temporary quarantine facilities. In such applications the use of UV bulb
technology can create many problems, for instance bulb technology requires numerous bulbs to
treat a large volume of air, generates significant heat, uses significant power and does not
produce large fluxes of UV light efficiently. This paper provides several methods of creating
quarantine level disinfection systems using high intensity UV laser sources instead of UV bulb
techniques by using laser beam shaping optics in conjunction with traditional optical laser beam
delivery techniques.
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