{"id":74747,"date":"2020-04-14T08:41:53","date_gmt":"2020-04-14T07:41:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbctoday.co.uk\/news\/?p=74747"},"modified":"2020-04-14T08:41:54","modified_gmt":"2020-04-14T07:41:54","slug":"indoor-humidity-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pbctoday.co.uk\/news\/building-control-news\/indoor-humidity-covid-19\/74747\/","title":{"rendered":"Indoor humidity regulations will reduce burden of COVID-19"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the UK sits in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, PBC Today <\/em>speaks to Dr Stephanie Taylor<\/a>, M.D., M. Arch, CIC, of Harvard Medical School, on how public buildings can become a key mechanism to fighting the virus by managing air quality<\/h2>\n

Given the World Health Organisation has now confirmed that COVID-19 survives under certain indoor air conditions<\/a>, and its head scientist of disease has urged hospitals to better manage their air quality for staff when treating patients, there is a serious need for the public to understand the impact that air humidification levels can have on viruses.<\/p>\n

Dr Taylor has been a physician for several decades with her primary practice in paediatric oncology and she now specialises in infection control. She says: \u201cWorking as a physician, I became very concerned about the impact on buildings on patient outcomes after observing the rates of new infections among young patients, despite our best medical treatment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis concern motivated me to learn about buildings, so I returned to school to get a master’s degree in architecture and engineering from Norwich University, Vermont. Today I am passionate about the power of the indoor environment to improve human health.\u201d<\/p>\n

What is infection control?<\/h3>\n

While we cannot predict outbreaks of viral infections, we can interrupt rapid viral transmission and spread of the diseases.\u00a0 When we are faced with a viral pandemic, such as we are now with COVID-19<\/a>, medical professionals focus on the containment of the illness through medical interventions such as vaccines and anti-viral medications.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, these interventions take an average of four to six months to produce, which makes slowing the spread of an unexpected and new viral outbreak a seemingly insurmountable task. But we do have other measures available to us. For example, decreasing transmission through social distancing and hand hygiene can help reduce rapid spread of the virus.<\/p>\n

These behavioural interventions will hopefully \u201cflatten the curve\u201d of transmission, which essentially means slowing it down to prevent further strain on health care facilities.<\/p>\n

How can buildings help ease the spread of COVID-19?<\/h3>\n

In my investigations into the variables contributing to new infections, called nosocomial or healthcare-associated infections, we found some unexpected forces at play. Clearly, room cleaning and hand hygiene interventions decreased direct patient to patient transmission of infections. However, another building factor emerged from our research, one which startled us at first. It became evident that dry indoor air<\/a> was associated with higher rates of infectious and inflammatory diseases in the building occupants.<\/p>\n

We now have an abundance of data that shows that maintaining indoor relative humidity at 40-60% benefits building occupants in several ways:<\/p>\n