Centre for Air Pollution Research (CAPR), Institute for Environmental Research (IER), Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran; Department of Environmental Health Engineering, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Science and Engineering Faculty, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Sci Total Environ. 2020 Jul 10;725:138401. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.138401. Epub 2020 Apr 6.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) emerged in Wuhan city, China, in late 2019 and has rapidly spread throughout the world. The major route of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is in contention, with the airborne route a likely transmission pathway for carrying the virus within indoor environments. Until now, there has been no evidence for detection of airborne severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and this may have implication for the potential spread of the COVID-19. We investigated the air of patient rooms with confirmed COVID-19 in the largest hospital in Iran, on March 17, 2020. To collect the SARS-CoV-2 particles, ten air samples were collected into the sterile standard midget impingers containing 20 mL DMEM with 100 μg/mL streptomycin, 100 U/mL penicillin and 1% antifoam reagent for 1 h. Besides, indoor particle number concentrations, CO, relative humidity and temperature were recorded throughout the sampling duration. Viral RNA was extracted from samples taken from the impingers and Reverse-Transcription PCR (RT-PCR) was applied to confirm the positivity of collected samples based on the virus genome sequence. Fortunately, in this study all air samples which were collected 2 to 5 m from the patients' beds with confirmed COVID-19 were negative. Despite we indicated that all air samples were negative, however, we suggest further in vivo experiments should be conducted using actual patient cough, sneeze and breath aerosols in order to show the possibility of generation of the airborne size carrier aerosols and the viability fraction of the embedded virus in those carrier aerosols.
2019 年年底，冠状病毒病 2019（COVID-19）在中国武汉市出现，并迅速在全球蔓延。SARS-CoV-2 的主要传播途径仍有争议，空气中传播可能是室内环境中携带病毒的一种传播途径。到目前为止，还没有证据表明可以检测到空气中的严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒 2（SARS-CoV-2），这可能对 COVID-19 的潜在传播有影响。我们于 2020 年 3 月 17 日在伊朗最大的医院调查了有确诊 COVID-19 患者的病房空气。为了收集 SARS-CoV-2 颗粒，我们将 10 个空气样本采集到装有 20ml DMEM 的无菌标准小型撞击器中，其中含有 100μg/ml 链霉素、100U/ml 青霉素和 1%消泡剂，收集时间为 1 小时。此外，还记录了整个采样过程中的室内粒子数浓度、CO、相对湿度和温度。从撞击器中采集的样本中提取病毒 RNA，应用逆转录 PCR（RT-PCR）根据病毒基因组序列确认采集样本的阳性。幸运的是，在这项研究中，所有从确诊 COVID-19 患者床边采集的距离患者 2 到 5 米的空气样本均为阴性。尽管我们表明所有空气样本均为阴性，但我们建议应进一步进行体内实验，使用实际患者咳嗽、打喷嚏和呼吸产生的气溶胶，以展示空气中生成的载气气溶胶以及嵌入病毒在这些载气气溶胶中的存活部分的可能性。
