Risk of Infection Due to Airborne Virus in Classroom Environments Lacking Mechanical Ventilation

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the role of indoor environments on disease transmission. Enclosed spaces where pathogen-laden aerosols accumulate was strongly linked to increased transmission events. Here we employ a surrogate non-pathogenic virus, the bacteriophage phi6, to interrogate aerosol tr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:bioRxiv 2022-12
Main Authors: Goldblatt, Alexandra, Loccisano, Michael J, Mahe, Mazharul I, Dennehy, John J, Spagnolo, Fabrizio
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aerosols
COVID-19
Disease transmission
Disinfection
Indoor environments
Mechanical ventilation
Phages
Relative humidity
Ultraviolet radiation
Viruses
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Summary:The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the role of indoor environments on disease transmission. Enclosed spaces where pathogen-laden aerosols accumulate was strongly linked to increased transmission events. Here we employ a surrogate non-pathogenic virus, the bacteriophage phi6, to interrogate aerosol transmission in classroom environments that do not have any natural or mechanical ventilation in order to determine how effectively aerosols facilitate new infections. We find that virus-laden aerosols establish new infections over all distances tested within minutes and that the time of exposure did not change transmission rate. We further find that humidity, but not temperature nor a UV-based disinfection device, significantly impacted transmission rates. Our data suggest that, even without mechanical ventilation, relative humidity remains a highly effective mitigation strategy while UV air treatment did not.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.
DOI:10.1101/2022.12.15.520644