Surprisingly, bats are teaching us about the relationship between indoor air, immune responses to SARS-CoV-2, and the COVID-19 disease.

Once we have an effective vaccine, will we forget about the importance of IAQ in protecting us from infectious respiratory viruses?

Antibiotics, antiseptics, high-frequency light waves, and oxygen radicals have saved many lives. We must use them selectively and for limited time periods, being fully aware of the ability of microbes to fight back with resistance. 

When the ambient humidity is low, fluid losses through skin and breathing quickly result in mild but impactful dehydration of our respiratory tract and skin. 

When considering COVID-19 best practices, turn to the mammalian respiratory tract for guidance. 

The best guide to safe indoor climate management is to understand the data behind each recommendation.

As we move into summer, many unanswered questions about the COVID-19 pandemic remain. Who gets sick and why? 

We now have the mechanical equipment to create protective buildings, the tools to measure and track the connections between indoor climates, and the computing capabilities to correlate the data to tell us if we are doing things right.

The current illnesses from the new coronavirus outbreak, and the associated human fear, has renewed people’s interest in the potential of the indoor environment to contain disease transmission. 

Outbreaks of viral infections are unpredictable. We are currently dealing with one caused by a virus labelled COVID-19 which originated in Wuhan, China.