Peng Zhe, Jimenez Jose L
Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences and Department of Chemistry, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, United States.
Environ Sci Technol Lett. 2021 Apr 5;8(5):392-397. doi: 10.1021/acs.estlett.1c00183. eCollection 2021 May 11.
CO is co-exhaled with aerosols containing SARS-CoV-2 by COVID-19-infected people and can be used as a proxy of SARS-CoV-2 concentrations indoors. Indoor CO measurements by low-cost sensors hold promise for mass monitoring of indoor aerosol transmission risk for COVID-19 and other respiratory diseases. We derive analytical expressions of CO-based risk proxies and apply them to various typical indoor environments. The relative infection risk in a given environment scales with excess CO level, and thus, keeping CO as low as feasible in a space allows optimization of the protection provided by ventilation. We show that the CO level corresponding to a given absolute infection risk varies by >2 orders of magnitude for different environments and activities. Although large uncertainties, mainly from virus exhalation rates, are still associated with infection risk estimates, our study provides more specific and practical recommendations for low-cost CO-based indoor infection risk monitoring.
新冠病毒感染者呼出含有严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒2（SARS-CoV-2）的气溶胶时会同时呼出一氧化碳（CO），CO可作为室内SARS-CoV-2浓度的替代指标。使用低成本传感器进行室内CO测量有望对新冠病毒及其他呼吸道疾病的室内气溶胶传播风险进行大规模监测。我们推导了基于CO的风险替代指标的解析表达式，并将其应用于各种典型室内环境。给定环境中的相对感染风险与过量CO水平成比例，因此，在空间内将CO保持在尽可能低的水平可优化通风提供的防护效果。我们表明，对于不同环境和活动，对应给定绝对感染风险的CO水平变化超过2个数量级。尽管感染风险估计仍存在很大不确定性，主要源于病毒呼出率，但我们的研究为基于低成本CO的室内感染风险监测提供了更具体、实用的建议。
