Decontaminating a Convention Center Post-COVID

By Evelyn Witterholt. 

Learn how the Javits Center was completely disinfected after being used as a temporary hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

After being used as a temporary hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Javits Center in New York City needed to be recommissioned and decontaminated. The convention center had been used as a 3000-bed field hospital in early 2020. Once recommissioning efforts were underway, the Javits Center stakeholders wanted to ensure it was ready for public use. 

The owners of the convention center decided to hire Pure Air Control Services, a service offering of Weatherproofing Technologies Inc. (WTI), to completely disinfect the facility. Not only did they want the spaces used by the public to be decontaminated, but they also wanted the HVAC equipment to be cleaned as well. With the center being 3.3 million square feet, this was no easy task.  

Fortunately for the center’s stakeholders, Pure Air/WTI were more than capable of taking on the job. Their team of accredited technicians decided to disinfect the center using PURE-Steam, PURE-Decon disinfection protocols and PURE-Blue HEPA filtration system. 

All of the roofs’ HVAC filters were decontaminated using their PURE-Decon electrostatic process. This process uses Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) List-N disinfectants for emerging pathogens (DEP). After carefully disposing of the filters, they HEPA vacuumed and cleaned the HVAC units. Then they steam-cleaned and sanitized them using WTI-Pure Air Control proprietary PURE-Steam technology and installed brand new HEPA filters. 

For the expo halls that were used as patient areas, the team was thorough about how they would disinfect these areas. They HEPA vacuumed the area and then disinfected it using the same PURE-Decon spray that was used on the HVAC units. Then, all the walls were wiped down using DEP and the floors were sanitized with scrubbers.  

By the end of the project, the entire Javits Center was declared safe to use for public events. The Pure Air/WTI team confirmed that all traces of the COVID-19 virus were gone. Geoff Stone, chief estimator for WTI said, “Closely partnering with the Javits’ team on logistics and coordination was integral to the project’s success at scale.”