Risk of infection due to airborne virus in classroom environments lacking mechanical ventilation.

ABSTRACT: The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the role of indoor environments on disease transmission. However, our understanding of how transmission occurred evolved as the pandemic progressed. Enclosed spaces where pathogen-laden aerosols accumulate were strongly linked to increased transmission events. Most classrooms, particulalry in the U.S., do not have any mechanical ventilation systems but do have many people congregating indoors for long periods of time. Here we employ a safe, non-pathogenic surrogate virus, the bacteriophage phi6, to interrogate aerosol transmission in classroom environments that do not have any natural or mechanical ventilation in order to provide baseline understanding of how effectively aerosols facilitate new infections. We measure exposure risk using a modified passive

SUBMITTER: Goldblatt A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11584072 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature