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It’s a clinic unlike Montrealers have ever seen — complete with a hot zone for patients suspected of carrying the highly contagious coronavirus.

As soon as patients with flu-like symptoms enter the clinic in the former emergency room of the old Hôtel-Dieu hospital, a security guard instructs them to don N-95 respirator masks and rub their hands with sanitizer. Again at the elevator, patients must use hand sanitizer.

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Outside the elevator on the second floor, patients must clean their hands a third time, given that they’ve probably pressed the elevator’s buttons. And once a patient leaves an examination room, the housekeeping staff not only disinfect all surfaces, but keep the room locked for at least a half-hour to allow for the ventilation system to carry out an air exchange.

Photo by Allen McInnis / Montreal Gazette

“This is a totally secure environment,” Liette Bernier, director of general services for the centre-south health authority in Montreal, said during an early morning tour on Tuesday of Quebec’s first COVID-19 screening clinic.