Understanding transmission pathways of SARS-CoV-2 to build safer indoor environments

Medium-range transport of SARS-CoV-2 by small aerosol particles is a potentially important, yet poorly understood transmission pathway of the virus.

In closed indoor environments, this process can lead to an elevated infection risk that primarily depends on virus concentration in air and exposure time.

To mitigate the infection risk one needs to consider, in addition to social distancing and good hand hygiene, (i) the effect of different ventialation measures on the pathogen concentration; and (ii) the residence time of receptive individuals in different types of indoor environments, such as office spaces, class rooms, public transportation, restaurants, etc.A main ambition of this project is to bring together experimental expertise from medical sciences and modelling expertise from aerosol physics in order to study indoor aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2.

To this end, we will (i) perform measurements of aerosol emission by healty and infected individuals during different breathing manoeuvers, phonation, forced exhalation and coughing; and (ii) use the emission data in an indoor aerosol transport model to compute pathogen concentrations in various indoor settings with and without different mitigation measures.

The goal is to attain a better understanding of the effectiveness of different measures to reduce the infection risk in closed indoor environments, such as ventilation and the design of working environments (e.g. shared vs individual office spaces).