study finds air conditioning favored contamination of several people

Measures social distancing are of crucial importance. However, in confined places like a restaurant, theair conditioned would also play a key role in the dissemination of secretions respiratory systems containingARN viral. This is what a recent research letter in the journal reports Emerging Infections Disease.

On the menu: postilions in SARS-CoV-2 sauce

It is in an air-conditioned 5-storey restaurant, without Windows, located in China that contaminations took place. A family from Whuan traveled to Guangzhou. Here she had lunch in said restaurant. The next day, a member of this family demonstrated typical symptoms of Covid-19. This lunch would have favored the contamination of 9 other people: 4 members of the same family and 5 people from the two other families nearby, including 2 people under the air conditioning.

The next day, 83 people had lunch on the same floor as these people; 10 have developed symptoms thereafter. The authors consider the path of contamination by air conditioner plausible even if other hypotheses cannot be ruled out (direct contamination, then intra-family contamination, other scenarios). Finally, the investigators recall that similar suspicious contaminations had already been observed about MERS-CoV.

Future recommendations for closed rooms?

The study has its limits, however – no experimentation simulating the airborne transmission route, no serological studies, with swab, on limbs. asymptomatic family and other guests to estimate the risk of direct infection – however, based on this potential discovery, the authors conclude that transmission of the droplets was caused by ventilation air conditioned. The key factor in the infection was the direction of the air flow. To avoid the spread of Covid-19 in restaurants, they recommend strengthening temperature monitoring, increasing the distance between tables and improving ventilation.