The world is just starting to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. Beyond the human cost of more than 8 million infected people with 437,000-plus deaths, the damage to the world economy will take years to recover. The COVID-19 pandemic is the most severe pandemic since the 1918 Spanish flu, which claimed 50 million lives. However, the world has experienced a number of devastating pandemics between 1918 and now (see Table 1).
Additionally, seasonal influenza has caused approximately 303,000 deaths in the U.S. during the past eight years (see Table 2).Is it time the built environment contributes toward mitigating the spread of coronaviruses and influenza? Yes.