Fast Air-to-Liquid Sampler Detects Surges in SARS-CoV-2 Aerosol Levels in Hospital Rooms

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the dangers of airborne pathogen transmission. SARS-CoV-2 is known to be transmitted through aerosols; however, little is known about the dynamics of these aerosols in real environments, the conditions, and the minimum viral load required for infection. Efficiently measuring and capturing pathogens present in the air would help to understand the infection process. Air samplers usually take several hours to obtain an air sample. In this work a fast (1–2 min) method for capturing bioaerosols into a liquid medium has been tested in hospital rooms with COVID-19 patients. This fast sampling allows detecting transient levels of aerosols in the air. SARS-CoV-2 RNA is detected in aerosols from several hospital rooms at different levels. Interestingly, there are sudden boosts of the SARS-CoV-2 load in the air, suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 could be released abundantly at certain moments. These results show that the distribution of SARS-CoV-2-containing aerosols is not homogeneous in the hospital room. This technology is a fast and effective tool for capturing airborne matter in a very short time, which allows for fast decision-making any kind of hazard in the air is detected. It is also useful for a better understanding of aerosols dynamics.

Optimal Fast Integral Decontamination of Bacillus thuringiensis Aerosols and Fast Disinfection of Contaminated Surfaces

“…It effectively removes chemical surrogates, nuclear surrogates, and even diesel particles from the air due to their particular dynamics, making particles aggregate and collapse [30][31][32]. Moreover, Counterfog ® devices were recently demonstrated to remove bacteriophage Φ29 and SARS-CoV2 virus aerosols from the air in rooms and railway cars [33]. Preliminary tests with Bacillus thuringiensis var.…”