The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that infection prevention actions need to be more efficient in public indoor environments. In addition to SARS-CoV-2, the cause of COVID-19, many pathogens, including other infectious viruses, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and premise plumbing pathogens, are an invisible threat, especially in public indoor spaces. The indoor hygiene concept for comprehensive infection prevention in built environments highlights that the indoor environment should be considered as a whole when aiming to create buildings with increased infection prevention capacity. Within indoor environments, infections can indirectly spread through surfaces, air, and water systems. Many methods, such as antimicrobial technologies and engineering solutions, targeting these indoor elements are available, which aim to increase the hygiene level in indoor environments. The architectural design itself lays a foundation for more efficient infection prevention in public buildings. Touchless solutions and antimicrobial coatings can be applied to frequently touched surfaces to prevent indirect contact infection. Special ventilation solutions and air purification systems should be considered to prevent airborne infection transmissions. Proper design and use of water supply systems combined with water treatment devices, if necessary, are important in controlling premise plumbing pathogens. This article gives a concise review of the functional and available hygiene-increasing methods—concentrating on indoor surfaces, indoor air, and water systems—to help the professionals, such as designers, engineers, and maintenance personnel, involved in the different stages of a building’s lifecycle, to increase the infection prevention capacity of public buildings.

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Indoor residents are constantly exposed to dynamic microbiota that have significant health effects. In addition to hand hygiene, cleaning, and disinfection, antimicrobial coatings (AMCs) can prevent the spread of infectious diseases in public areas. The sustainable use of antimicrobial-coated products requires an assessment of their pros and cons for human health and the environment. The toxicity and resistance risks of AMCs have been considered, but large-scale genetic studies on the microbial community compositions and resistomes of AMCs are scarce. The use of an AMC can reduce the total number of microbes on a surface but poses the risk of dysbiosis, microbial imbalance, such as the polarized growth of metallophilic, metal- and antimicrobial-resistant, and other survivor bacteria, and the overall reduction of microbial diversity. Loss of diversity may lead to the enrichment of harmful bacteria and an increased risk of communicable or immunological non-communicable inflammatory diseases (NCDs). In public buildings, such as kindergartens and nursing homes for the elderly, the use of AMCs is likely to increase due to epidemics and pandemics in recent years. Therefore, comprehensive metagenomic research is needed to monitor the effects of AMCs on indoor microbial community compositions and functions. Although the determination of good indoor microbiota and homeostasis is difficult, microbial communities that have health-protective or harmful effects can and should be identified using a metagenomic sequencing approach before the large-scale implementation of AMCs.