A blog about hospital infection prevention.

**Very good info!!

This letter responds to your question concerning the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 could be spread by conversation, in addition to sneeze/cough-induced droplets.

This JAMA Insights Clinical Update discusses the need to better understand the dynamics of respiratory disease transmission by better characterizing transmission routes, the role of patient physiology in shaping them, and best approaches for source control in the context of the COVID-19 outbreak.

{No proposed methods for control}

There is emerging evidence, largely from studies in Europe and North America, that economic deprivation increases the magnitude of morbidity and mortality related to air pollution. Two major reasons why this may be true are that the poor experience higher levels of exposure to air pollution, and the …

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a nationwide lockdown is imposed in India initially for three weeks from 24th March to 14th April 2020 and extended up to 3rd May 2020. Due to the forced restrictions, pollution level in cities across the country drastically slowed down just within few days which magnetiz …

Air pollution has happened to be one of the mounting alarms to be concerned with in many Indian cities. COVID-19 epidemic endow with a unique opportunity to report the degree of air quality improvement due to the nationwide lockdown in 10 most polluted cities across the country. National Air Quality …

Primary route of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 among humans is droplets and direct contact. Airborne transmission of this virus is not established conclusively and so is the role of airborne particulate matter. This commentary examines the existing evidence about the role of particulate matter pollutan …

This study has two goals. The first is to explain the geo-environmental determinants of the accelerated diffusion of COVID-19 that is generating a high level of deaths. The second is to suggest a strategy to cope with future epidemic threats similar to COVID-19 having an accelerated viral infectivit …

{High # of particulates in outdoor air may correlate with higher COVID-19 occurrence} A number of nations were forced to declare a total shutdown due to COVID-19 infection, as extreme measure to cope with dramatic impact of the pandemic, with remarkable consequences both in terms of negative health outcomes and economic loses. However, in many countries a "Phase-2" is approaching and …

The COVID-19 pandemic caused the shutdown of entire nations all over the world. In addition to mobility restrictions of people, the World Health Organization and the Governments have prescribed maintaining an inter-personal distance of 1.5 or 2 m (about ...

Certain respiratory tract infections are transmitted through air. Coughing and sneezing by an infected person can emit pathogen-containing particles with diameters less than 10 μm that can reach the alveolar region. Based on our analysis of the ...

Size distributions of expiratory droplets expelled during coughing and speaking and the velocities of the expiration air jets of healthy volunteers were measured. Droplet size was measured using the interferometric Mie imaging (IMI) technique while the ...

The coronavirus disease‐2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic has heightened the awareness of aerosol generation by human expiratory events and their potential role in viral respiratory disease transmission. Concerns over high severe acute respiratory ...

{Viruses-- probly applies to SARS-COV-2} Many airborne viruses have been shown to be sensitive to ambient humidity, yet the mechanisms responsible for this phenomenon remain elusive. We review multiple hypotheses, including water activity, surface inactivation, and salt toxicity, that may account for the association between humidity and viability of viruses in aerosols. We assess the evidence and limitations for each hypothesis based on findings from virology, aerosol science, chemistry, and physics. In addition, we hypothesize that changes in pH within the aerosol that are induced by evaporation may trigger conformational changes of the surface glycoproteins of enveloped viruses and subsequently compromise their infectivity. This hypothesis may explain the differing responses of enveloped viruses to humidity. The precise mechanisms underlying the relationship remain largely unverified, and attaining a complete understanding of them will require an interdisciplinary approach.

Recent studies have investigated the efficacy of air-cleaning products against pathogens in the air. A standard method to evaluate the reduction in airborne viruses caused by an air cleaner has been established using a safe bacteriophage instead of pathogenic viruses; the reduction in airborne viru …

Evidence is emerging that warmer temperatures and higher humidity can indeed affect the disease’s spread.

A new expiratory droplet investigation system (EDIS) was used to conduct the most comprehensive program of study to date, of the dilution corrected dr…

Europe PMC is an archive of life sciences journal literature.

Ventilation with outdoor air plays an important role influencing human exposures to indoor pollutants. This review and assessment indicates that increasing ventilation rates above currently adopted standards and guidelines should result in reduced prevalence of negative health outcomes. Building ope …

"The microbial load was not affected significantly by the temperature, relative humidity, working shift, season, and number of visitors, indicating the effectiveness of a well-designed ventilation system to eliminate site-specific variations. ..A significant correlation was only observed between the number of particles with a diameter of > 10 μm and the airborne microbial loading. Thus, passive sampling may not properly reflect the actual concentrations of smaller bioaerosols. In conclusion, HEPA filters in the HVAC system successfully decreased the bioaerosol concentrations in the hospital environment."