Circumventing Covid-19 with better ventilation and air quality

Gathering outdoors has provided people a safer alternative to meeting inside during the Covid-19 pandemic. But for those who spend their days in crowded indoor spaces — workers in office buildings and industrial facilities, students in schools, and the like — how can their indoor environments be made more similar to the outdoors? With better air quality and ventilation.

 How the Covid-19 Threat Could Help Us Breathe Easier at the Office

The pandemic presents a once-in-a-generation chance to make employees healthier and happier by improving indoor air quality, say experts; what to ask before returning to shared indoor spaces.

 How to use ventilation and air filtration to prevent the spread of coronavirus indoors

If you walk into a building and it feels hot, stuffy and crowded, chances are that there is not enough ventilation. Turn around and leave. By paying attention to air circulation and filtration, improving them where you can and staying away from places where you can’t, you can add another powerful tool to your anti-coronavirus toolkit.

 Paging Dr. Hamblin: Can AC Spread the Coronavirus?

The exact risk is unknown, but it’s a good moment to make sure ventilation systems are working well.

 The Plan to Stop Every Respiratory Virus at Once

The benefits of ventilation reach far beyond the coronavirus. What if we stop taking colds and flus for granted, too?

 We Need to Talk About Ventilation

How is it that... we are still doing so little to mitigate airborne transmission? There are two key mitigation strategies for countering poor ventilation and virus-laden aerosols indoors: We can dilute viral particles’ presence by exchanging air in the room with air from outside (and thus lowering the dose, which matters for the possibility and the severity of infection) or we can remove viral particles from the air with filters.

 What everyone should know about ventilation and preventing Covid-19

Spaces with central air can benefit from improved systems, such as higher-quality mechanical filters—MERV 13 or higher, whatever the system can tolerate—and they don’t have to be fancy. Spaces without central air can benefit from portable air purifiers, or even a mechanical filter attached to a box fan. Humidifiers might also be helpful. Improved ventilation, though, isn’t going to stop the spread of the coronavirus on its own.

 You don’t need fancy air filter systems to reduce Covid-19 risk

The good news is that researchers believe the coronavirus is pretty easy to trap in existing high-performance mechanical filters. Though the coronavirus itself usually measures about a tenth of a micron, virus-containing particles in the air are much bigger, mostly between 1 and 10 microns.

As We Return To Work And School During The Pandemic, Can The Air Inside Be Kept Safe?

There's a lot to consider. And as the science on COVID-19 has been evolving, the right actions haven't always been clear. Now, some building operators are intimidated or overwhelmed by the scale of the challenge.

CDC Admits the Coronavirus Is Airborne, Can Be Transmitted More Than 6 Feet Away

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is finally acknowledging something that health experts have been saying for a while now: COVID-19 spreads through the air and can be inhaled by someone who is more than six feet away.

Coronavirus is in the air. Here’s how to get it out

How to make indoor air safer (but not necessarily safe) during the pandemic.

COVID-19 Is Transmitted Through Aerosols. We Have Enough Evidence, Now It Is Time to Act

It is important to think about ventilation and air cleaning. We take operable windows and HVAC systems for granted, rarely paying attention to how they work. Times are different now, and we need to learn how to best use these systems to decrease risk.

Covid-19 proved bad indoor air quality makes us sick. We can fix that

Air quality scientists are demanding a “paradigm shift” in ventilation standards.

Everything You Wanted to Know About Air Purifiers and Coronavirus

Air purifier marketing suggests they make a meaningful difference to the risks of spreading COVID-19; here’s what the experts have to say.

Experts say COVID’s airborne transmission may deserve more attention

Researchers who study tiny aerosols are concerned that the role of these particles is being downplayed in public health communication.

Five Tips For Improving Air Quality And Ventilation When Returning To The Office

I have a few recommendations based on my experience in the HVAC space. However, it's also important to keep in mind that while air cleaning or filtration can help reduce airborne contaminants, it's not enough to completely prevent exposure to Covid-19. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "When used along with other best practices recommended by CDC and others, filtration can be part of a plan to reduce the potential for airborne transmission of COVID-19 indoors."

Improving ventilation will help curb SARS-CoV-2

One way to ensure compliance might be to issue ventilation certificates for buildings, similar to the food-hygiene certificates which already exist for restaurants. Occupants should also be given information about air quality routinely, she adds, through the use of monitors and sensors that can display a room’s carbon-dioxide levels or other relevant measures.

Key to Preventing Covid-19 Indoors: Ventilation

Reopening schools and businesses should upgrade air systems, open windows and take other measures to ensure clean air, scientists say

Ventilated Classrooms Are Critical To Protecting Our Children From Covid Infection

The body of scientific evidence pointing to airborne transmission as the main route by which SARS-CoV-2 spreads is now overwhelming. In outbreaks and super spreader events, there are often three common elements; an indoor space, an absence of masks, and a low level of ventilation.

Ventilation and masks are key to curbing Covid

Why does the government only emphasise washing, distance and masks, but never good ventilation? It has been obvious to me from the start that poorly ventilated interiors, such as in small shops, have atmospheres that are viral soups. The lack of emphasis on ventilation is insane.

Ventilation and surveillance testing can help keep U.S. schools open in the fall, new studies suggest

Several Covid-19 mitigation measures — including improving ventilation, requiring adults to wear face masks and conducting frequent surveillance testing — can help schools stay open and students remain safe, two new studies suggest.

We should install air purifiers with HEPA filters in every classroom. It could help with COVID, bushfire smoke and asthma

In combination with other risk-reduction strategies, air purifiers could be an affordable way to reduce the risk of unmitigated COVID spread between unvaccinated students and staff, and the inevitable spread between, and within, these children’s households.