As restrictions relax and employers ask people to return to the office, health experts are expressing the importance of indoor air ventilation to fight COVID-19.
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Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, epidemiologist, biostatistician, professor and researcher at the University of Texas School of Public Health, told KCBS Radio's "Ask An Expert" being mindful of air quality is a major tool to protect people from coronavirus.
"Improving indoor air is an incredibly powerful mitigation tool that I think has been underutilized really throughout the pandemic," she said. "It's one of the best interventions because it’s really happening in the background, it's an institutional level intervention that works passively and invisibly for individuals."
When returning to public spaces, Jetelina said one of the most important things a person can do is to advocate that schools or workplaces improve ventilation.
"They can do this three ways, one is improve the airflow to bring clean outdoor air in, enhance filtration so removing the viral particles from indoor air and also air disinfection is showing us to be particularly useful for SARS-coV-2," she explained.
During the pandemic, a demand for HEPA air purifiers— filters tested to remove 99.4% of particles at 0.02 microns and 0.10 microns— has risen as people come to understand the impact of indoor air quality.
"Research has shown that one HEPA filter is about as effective as two windows partly open," Jetelina said. "Two HEPA filters are even more effective, as you can imagine, with a four-fold decrease in transmission."
COVID-19 particles range around 0.125 microns, meaning HEPA air purifiers are extremely effective at reducing the risk of coronavirus indoors, including predominant subvariant BA.2.
"BA.2 is a sister of omicron, so what that tells us is it's airborne and these aerosols are much tinier and light weight so they can be suspended in the air and float and that means you don't need to sneeze or cough, these can just be spread by talking," Jetelina said. "The value of ventilation and filtration is just as important as it was before."
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