• DOI:10.1126/science.abg2025
• Corpus ID: 234487289

A paradigm shift to combat indoor respiratory infection

@article{Morawska2021APS,
  title={A paradigm shift to combat indoor respiratory infection},
  author={Lidia Morawska and Joseph G Allen and William P. Bahnfleth and Philomena M. Bluyssen and A. C. Boerstra and Giorgio Buonanno and Junji Cao and Stephanie J. Dancer and Andres Floto and F Francesco Franchimon and Trisha Greenhalgh and Charles Haworth and Jaap Hogeling and Christina Isaxon and Jose Luis Jimenez and Jarek Kurnitski and Yuguo Li and M.G.L.C. Loomans and Guy Marks and Linsey C. Marr and Livio Mazzarella and Arsen K. Melikov and Shelly L. Miller and Donald K. Milton and William W. Nazaroff and Peter V. Nielsen and Catherine J. Noakes and Jordan Peccia and K. A. Prather and Xavier Querol and Chandra Sekhar and Olli Sepp{\"a}nen and Shin‐ichi Tanabe and Julian Wei-Tze Tang and Raymond Tellier and Kwok Wai Tham and Pawel Wargocki and Aneta Wierzbicka and Maosheng Yao},
  journal={Science},
  year={2021},
  volume={372},
  pages={689 - 691}
}

• L. Morawska, J. Allen, +36 authors M. Yao
• Published 14 May 2021
• Medicine
• Science

Building ventilation systems must get much better There is great disparity in the way we think about and address different sources of environmental infection. Governments have for decades promulgated a large amount of legislation and invested heavily in food safety, sanitation, and drinking water for public health purposes. By contrast, airborne pathogens and respiratory infections, whether seasonal influenza or COVID-19, are addressed fairly weakly, if at all, in terms of regulations, standards, and building design and operation, pertaining to the air we breathe. We suggest that the rapid growth in our understanding of the mechanisms behind respiratory infection transmission should drive a paradigm shift in how we view and address the transmission of respiratory infections to protect against unnecessary suffering and economic losses. It starts with a recognition that preventing respiratory infection, like reducing waterborne or foodborne disease, is a tractable problem.