“We’re here exactly for this reason,” she said. “We’ve seen all the fear factors going into Ebola, and a lot of it is unfounded. We can safely take care of these patients and the people who take care of them, which is a huge issue.”

Built for $1 million in 2004 following a deadly outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in Canada and the threat of biological terrorism in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the biocontainment unit is on the seventh floor of the Nebraska Medical Center in what is essentially a series of independent concrete boxes within a larger concrete box.

The unit is sealed off both physically and environmentally from the rest of the hospital using a series of independent air circulation systems to keep the atmosphere in each of the five two-bed rooms entirely isolated.

A “negative airflow” system pumps air into each room, preventing pathogens from escaping. The hallway connected to each of the rooms is equipped with the same system as an extra safeguard.

Inside the rooms, a “single pass” environment prevents air from being recycled in the unit. Over the course of an hour, the atmosphere of one room may be replaced as many as 25 times, as air from the room is sucked into a special high-efficiency particulate air filtration and ventilation system.