Scientists are realizing more ways that coronavirus is being spread. It isn’t just through close contact as many have first proclaimed. The virus can float through the air and be inhaled by someone, even if they’re diligently practicing social distancing.
During these summer months, as more people head back to work, and doing more group activities, the airborne virus is a concern for many. So scientists have turned their attention to air conditioning.
Why air conditioning, you may ask?
According to infectious disease expert, Ed Nardell at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, indoor AC units can spread the virus. The units create air currents that can blow the virus around a room. He said that problem was clear in the case of one restaurant in Wuhan, China, where researchers studied why so many people eating there became sick.
“Where apparently someone infected not only people at their own table, but at the next table and the table after that, which happened to be that in the direction of the airflow from a wall unit air conditioner,” he said.
Cases of COVID-19 have risen fast “in some of the hottest and stickiest parts of the country,” according to USA Today.
Engineers and ventilation experts told USA Today this might because residents avoid the heat by heading indoors, which leads them to areas with air conditioning and ventilation systems.
Those systems might spread COVID-19 farther than fresh air.
If you think of bars and restaurants, yes, people are being socially distanced and wearing masks. But the air can filter through the room and infect those sitting inside.
“Airborne transmission of the virus can occur in…
…health care settings where specific medical procedures, called aerosol generating procedures, generate very small droplets called aerosols. Some outbreak reports related to indoor crowded spaces have suggested the possibility of aerosol transmission, combined with droplet transmission, for example, during choir practice, in restaurants or in fitness classes,” according to the World Health Organization.
“Ventilation is the key control point for an airborne virus. Based on multiple studies done by the authors, we believe that optimized ventilation is the way to move forward, removing the virus from the air before people inhale it. We think that’s one of the main ways it’s transmitted,” Dr. Julian Tang, an author of a paper on COVID-19 spread, told USA Today.
Since not everyone has the option to stay outside, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers is figuring out ways to make indoor spaces safer.
The key is to lower the concentration of possibly infected particles in the air, the Society stated.
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