Air Filtration/UV Light Can Remove Airborne SARS-CoV-2 From Hospital Wards, Study Finds
In a study published earlier this year, Paul McKeigue and colleagues analysed data on all diagnosed cases of COVID-19 in Scotland, as well as a large number of matched controls. They found that a staggering 30% of severe cases (those that resulted in critical care admission or death) were linked to a recent hospital visit.
This suggests widespread nosocomial transmission of SARS-CoV-2. In other words, a lot of people caught their infections in hospital, and then became seriously ill.
The fact that such a large portion of severe cases were linked to a recent hospital visit is actually not so surprising. After all, people vulnerable to COVID-19 (the elderly and persons with underlying health conditions) are overrepresented among those who make frequent hospital visits.
Nonetheless, it’s rather concerning that hospitals – places where people are meant to come out healthier than they go in – were a major site of SARS-CoV-2 transmission.
Given that COVID-19 patients, as well as those vulnerable to COVID-19, tend to be concentrated in hospitals, making efforts to reduce nosocomial transmission would seem like a top priority. Indeed, one would expect interventions that did reduce such transmission to have a large benefit/cost ratio.
Which makes a new preprint so interesting. Andrew Conway-Morris and colleagues investigated whether airborne SARS-CoV-2 could be removed from hospital wards using portable devices that filter and sterilise the air.
Their experiment involved two units within an English hospital: an ordinary Covid ward, and an ICU containing Covid patients. The presence of airborne SARS-CoV-2 was measured during three consecutive weeks: one in which the devices were turned off; one in which they were turned on; and one in which they were turned off again.
In addition to measuring the presence of SARS-CoV-2, the researchers measured the presence of various other microbial bioaerosols, such as E. coli and staphylococcus. Their results for the Covid ward are shown in the figure below.
When the devices were turned off, many microbial bioaerosols (including SARS-CoV-2) were detected. Yet when they were turned on, all of these except candida were undetectable. This means the devices were successful in removing not only SARS-CoV-2, but also other potentially dangerous pathogens.
As the authors note, SARS-CoV-2 was detected on “all five days before activation of air/UV filtration, but on none of the five days when the air/UV filter was operational”. The virus was again detected on “four out of five days when the filter was off”.
Interestingly, SARS-CoV-2 was barely detected in the ICU (regardless of whether the devices were turned on). This may be because viral shedding is lower among critically ill patients, or because ICU staff were wearing proper N95 masks.
It’s important to note: the study didn’t show that the devices actually prevent transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in hospitals. However, the results constitute strong circumstantial evidence that they would reduce transmission.
While attempting to halt transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in the community at large is costly at best and futile at worst, attempting to do so in high-risk hospital environments makes a great deal of sense. Further investigation into the efficacy of these devices is clearly warranted.
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What are this meaningless studies? This is Good News Friday
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Thanks for the information. I’ll see if I can make it to the Grand Stand in the Park tomorrow (probably not, though).
UV has been used as a steriliser for many decades. Thats why colds and flu are less in the summer because the sun shines and helps kill off those nasty bugs. (In the winter there is less sun shine and UV but the air humidity goes up and viruses thrive).
UV does deactivate viruses, but it isn’t the reason for colds/influenza coming in winter — people just spend too much time indoors for this to have a substantial effect. It is far more likely that winter diseases come because of the impact of lower vitamin D levels on the immune system.
I think you’re both partially right. With regard to ultra violet, the relatively low exposure to UV-B from this time of year on to next Spring, (due to light strength, short daylight, cold conditions and associated clothing etc) reduces our automatic generation of vitamin D.
Note that many organisations have tweaked their recommendations about the level of vitamin D supplements that should be used. Actual numbers vary, but the NHS one doubled the recommended value cf last year. Note that the image below was taken in early June this year. Another negative effect of “lockdown”!
Re sterilisation, by UV, it’s the higher frequency band (UV-C) that can annihilate any virus, and other things. Sometimes (and should be) used in air con plant that uses recycling, e.g., but if it doesn’t work properly in buildings with plant like that, it’s possible for the air to be a bit unhealthy, as it were.
What a shame UV light doesn’t have such an effect on lies and deception. Or perhaps it does?
Mentioning UV light is triggering and verboten. Orange Man Bad.
So… Trump was right, is what you’re saying.
Works, cheap, endorsed by Trump first and undermining the need for vaxx passports. No chance.
If UV is so dangerous to the virus, then we will need to keep people locked down in their houses and preferably with masks on.
Ah, there’s the Rub. Imagine if everyone were allowed outside as much as possible during the great sunny and warm weather of April/May/June 2020? Especially the less wealthy/OAPs living in flats with no gardens? All the Stasi saying how bad it was and clearing local parks because people were ‘picknicking’ or ‘drinking coffee with friends’.
This is really bad news (though not entirely new) for Vallance, Whitty and co.
Maybe those guys who like lying down on the M25 should switch to this?
Meanwhile, we can all lobby for this to happen in hospitals, along with extra ICU beds.
Just to irritate them, because they won’t want to do it.
Wouldn’t simply opening the windows do the job?
No, not so effective. Useful – but in hospital getting full draughts through is difficult, and in winter especially there are many old people who need warmth. And at night.
Hospitals are overheated. It became a running joke when I worked in A&E, how do you know it’s summer? The heating is on. Wards get very stuffy, you can’t have air conditioning because of the risk of infection! In the old days it was standard practice to open windows, people with TB were encouraged to go outside. Clostridium difficile is notorious for ripping through complete wards. If you are unwell the worst place to be is hospital (my cynic quotient has increased significantly recently)
Controlled, filtered ventilation – especially wrt vulnerable people is far better than just unfettered (and cold) fresh air, but even the latter is far better than hardly any at all.
As proven by all those PFI schools with inadequate ventilation where pupils kept on falling asleep or had poor attention spans because the CO2 levels were too high and Oxygen too low. That and overheated rooms.
I’ve seen some shockers at how badly they were designed, both from an architectual pov and engineering.
I think the filtration would be down to virus levels so could remove any infection almost at its source. Open windows just makes sure it spreads around.
News just out. Sunlight stops cold viruses….
This is still a nothing burger virus.
That governments and the media are gaslighting us into socioeconomic collapse THAT IS THE NEWS.
Nothing on the resignation of Gladys Berejiklian as Premier of New South Wales after coming under investigation for corruption?
I hope they keep pulling on that particular thread, will be interesting to see what unravels
So where can we get one of these portable devices, and how much do they cost?
Medi-Immune ProtectivAIR
https://medi-immune.com/protectivair/
I’ve had a Daikin photocatalytic air filter system in my house for ages as I’m very immune reactive to yeasts/moulds in air or food.
It does claim to inactivate airborne viral particles too
See here. https://www.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/en/news/60119
and Here https://www.studyfinds.org/proof-far-uvc-light-kills-covid-19/
To see that the Japanese have known this for about a year now.
Clare Craig’s been mentioning this for a while.
The original SARS was also a nosocomial (almost wrote it ‘not so comical’) infection. From the very beginning of this debacle the government should have been looking in-house and implementing common sense solutions like this one in hospitals and nursing homes. Then the problem goes away almost entirely.
Instead they’ve chosen to politicise this virus into an asympomatically spreading existential threat to the future of our nation, warranting genetic modification of the human population rather than focused protection and building natural immunity. They’ve created a fantasy vaccine for a fantasy virus.
The real virus isn’t a danger to the general population and the real vaccine kills people and actually promotes the spread of the disease, providing the Government a perpetual problem to transform society with.
What a joke. The worst thing is the middle class are perfectly happy to go along with it as long as they get to work from home.
Open tanning booths on wards perhaps?
Well, it would certainly be something for the nurses to do after finishing their TikTok dance routines!
The “competing interests” section of this preprint also makes a good read.
After masks and tests, even more money needs to be stolen from the public by selling those filters.
A well-known fact in the Building Services Engineering (Construction) inmdustry for a LONG time. Amazing how the MSM and the Civil Service are just realising this. Poor ventilation = higher incidence of illness via airborne particles.
I would suggest requesting those who deploy this military developed pathogen to stop doing it and leave us all alone.
My (private) dentist told me a year ago that ultraviolet light killed the coronabug. All medics knew it. Except, apparently, those in the NHS.
Interesting.
Given the nosocomial nature of a large proportion of real infections, a significant pilot is needed.
My visits to hospitals recently have all included temperature checks and the requirement to wear a mask. I can’t imagine that other hospitals don’t have the same requirement, so what does this result say about mask wearing?
Fresh air and sunshine good for health? Well I never.
What a surprise. Although heating & ventilation is not my speciality, as a retired guy I’ve been aware of the possibility of using ultra violet C (UV C) as a steriliser, especially in air conditioning plant that is using air recycling (often done to save energy). Of course, they might be getting paid for doing the study; good luck to them.
It would be silly to assume you can only get Coronavirus Delta when you are inside – it floats around in the air outside too, blown hither and yon by the air currents – Flu and Coronaviruses are 1/000 the size of a grain of rice and invisible to the human eye and you breathe them into your nose (hopefully if you are a nose breather) and they seed themselves in the warm, wet, humid places inside your nasal passages, inside you head and it is from there, they later become Covid, passing down into your lungs in the 1 liter of snot or mucus we each create daily (the engine oil of the body). It has been confirmed that an infected person will pass Coronavirus Delta onto another person, in the time it takes 2 people walking past each other, in the 2 to 10 seconds of passing contact and being vaccinated won’t make a blind bit of difference, because everyone, potentially, will get Coronavirus or the Flu – the “purpose” of the vaccines, is to stop Coronavirus Delta becoming Covid Delta and nothing else. I say, kill the Coronavirus, while it is a virus and before it is… Read more »
We seem to be conflating 2 things here without explaining things very well. Air filtration and UV light. Last April I wrote to my useless MP sent him some papers on UV and viruses. The only possible reason not to employ UV was thought to be its carcinogenic aspect, but the tech now exists for a ‘far UV’ spectrum array totally non carcinogenic, and a company was producing these commercially for around $1000 per system, I think for use in food production environments. Absolutely no idea why these shouldn’t have made masks unnecessary in indoor spaces by now.
Why don’t they open the windows in hospitals? Whenever I’ve been in a hospital (as a visitor or an outpatient), the windows are always closed. It’s well known that fresh air is good as it has far more good microbes in it than bad and so this tends to drive out the baddies. Hence the directive earlier in the pandemic…