ABSTRACT
The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic renewed interest in infectious aerosols and reducing risk of airborne respiratory pathogen transmission, prompting development of devices to protect healthcare workers during airway procedures. However, there are no standard methods for assessing the efficacy of particle containment with these protective devices. We designed and built an aerosol bio-containment device (ABCD) to contain and remove aerosol via an external suction system and tested the aerosol containment of the device in an environmental chamber using a novel, quantitative assessment method. The ABCD exhibited a strong ability to control aerosol exposure in experimental and computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulated scenarios with appropriate suction use and maintenance of device seals. Using a log-risk-reduction framework, we assessed device containment efficacy and showed that, when combined with other protective equipment, the ABCD can significantly reduce airborne clinical exposure. We propose this type of quantitative analysis serves as a basis for rating efficacy of aerosol protective enclosures.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Humans , COVID-19/prevention & control , Respiratory Aerosols and Droplets , Personal Protective Equipment , Protective Devices , Infectious Disease Transmission, Patient-to-Professional/prevention & controlSubject(s)
Coronavirus Infections/complications , Coronavirus Infections/diagnosis , Neoplasms/complications , Pneumonia, Viral/complications , Pneumonia, Viral/diagnosis , Betacoronavirus , COVID-19 , Coronavirus Infections/epidemiology , Humans , Pandemics , Pneumonia, Viral/epidemiology , Prevalence , SARS-CoV-2 , United Kingdom/epidemiologyABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted public health and the worldwide economy. Converging evidence from the current pandemic, previous outbreaks and controlled experiments indicates that SARS-CoVs are present in wastewater for several days, leading to potential health risks via waterborne and aerosolized wastewater pathways. Conventional wastewater treatment provides only partial removal of SARS-CoVs, thus safe disposal or reuse will depend on the efficacy of final disinfection. This underscores the need for a risk assessment and management framework tailored to SARS-CoV-2 transmission via wastewater, including new tools for environmental surveillance, ensuring adequate disinfection as a component of overall COVID-19 pandemic containment. Converging evidence indicates that SARS-CoVs are present in wastewater for several days with potential health risks. This Review analyses knowledge about such risks as well as the potential spread of SARS-CoVs in waterborne, waterborne-aerosolized and waterborne-foodborne pathways during a pandemic.