Pandemic management requires exposure science
COVID-19 was first detected in Wuhan, China, on 8.12.2019, and WHO announced it a pandemic on 11.3.2020. No vaccines or medical cures against COVID-19 were available in the first corona year. Instead, different combinations of generic non-pharmaceutical interventions – to slow down the spread of inf...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:9392555 2023-05-15T17:33:51+02:00 Pandemic management requires exposure science Jantunen, Matti J. 2022-08-20 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9392555/ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2022.107470 en eng The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9392555/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2022.107470 © 2022 The Author Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active. Environ Int Short Communication Text 2022 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2022.107470 2022-08-28T00:55:05Z COVID-19 was first detected in Wuhan, China, on 8.12.2019, and WHO announced it a pandemic on 11.3.2020. No vaccines or medical cures against COVID-19 were available in the first corona year. Instead, different combinations of generic non-pharmaceutical interventions – to slow down the spread of infections via exposure restrictions to ‘flatten the curve’ so that it would not overburden the health care systems, or to suppress the virus to extinction – were applied with varying levels of strictness, duration and success in the Pacific and North Atlantic regions. Due to an old misconception, almost all public health authorities dismissed the possibility that the virus would be transmitted via air. Opportunities to reduce the inhalation exposure – such as wearing effective FFP2/N95 respirators, improving ventilation and indoor air cleaning – were missed, and instead, hands were washed and surfaces disinfected. The fact that aerosols were acknowledged as the main route of COVID-19 transmission in 2021 opened avenues for more efficient and socially less disruptive exposure and risk reduction policies that are discussed and evaluated here, demonstrating that indoor air and exposure sciences are crucial for successful management of pandemics. To effectively apply environmental and personal exposure mitigation measures, exposure science needs to target the human-to-human exposure pathways of the virus. Text North Atlantic PubMed Central (PMC) Pacific Environment International 107470 |
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Short Communication Jantunen, Matti J. Pandemic management requires exposure science |
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COVID-19 was first detected in Wuhan, China, on 8.12.2019, and WHO announced it a pandemic on 11.3.2020. No vaccines or medical cures against COVID-19 were available in the first corona year. Instead, different combinations of generic non-pharmaceutical interventions – to slow down the spread of infections via exposure restrictions to ‘flatten the curve’ so that it would not overburden the health care systems, or to suppress the virus to extinction – were applied with varying levels of strictness, duration and success in the Pacific and North Atlantic regions. Due to an old misconception, almost all public health authorities dismissed the possibility that the virus would be transmitted via air. Opportunities to reduce the inhalation exposure – such as wearing effective FFP2/N95 respirators, improving ventilation and indoor air cleaning – were missed, and instead, hands were washed and surfaces disinfected. The fact that aerosols were acknowledged as the main route of COVID-19 transmission in 2021 opened avenues for more efficient and socially less disruptive exposure and risk reduction policies that are discussed and evaluated here, demonstrating that indoor air and exposure sciences are crucial for successful management of pandemics. To effectively apply environmental and personal exposure mitigation measures, exposure science needs to target the human-to-human exposure pathways of the virus. |
format |
Text |
author |
Jantunen, Matti J. |
author_facet |
Jantunen, Matti J. |
author_sort |
Jantunen, Matti J. |
title |
Pandemic management requires exposure science |
title_short |
Pandemic management requires exposure science |
title_full |
Pandemic management requires exposure science |
title_fullStr |
Pandemic management requires exposure science |
title_full_unstemmed |
Pandemic management requires exposure science |
title_sort |
pandemic management requires exposure science |
publisher |
The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. |
publishDate |
2022 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9392555/ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2022.107470 |
geographic |
Pacific |
geographic_facet |
Pacific |
genre |
North Atlantic |
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North Atlantic |
op_source |
Environ Int |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9392555/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2022.107470 |
op_rights |
© 2022 The Author Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active. |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2022.107470 |
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Environment International |
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107470 |
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