JOE ALLEN: This will surprise people.
We don't have a single documented case of transmission from contaminated surfaces.
The reality is this is an airborne virus. We're focusing our attention on the wrong
risk -- surfaces -- and not focusing our attention and resources on where the real risk is
and that's airborne transmission.
So the story of covid in my view is one of a series of missteps.
We actually knew what to do very early on.
There was this early fear that maybe this virus was spread through surfaces and that led to
in my opinion over-response towards cleaning surfaces.
One of the problems with focusing too much attention on surface transmission
is that many organizations -- I've worked with homeless shelters schools -- have been spending
all their time and money on addressing the risk through surface contamination
as opposed to spending that time and money focusing on the real risk which is through
the air which means they should be focusing on things like ventilation and filtration.
There are even reports of some schools that are closing for an entire day
for deep cleaning. So that doesn't make any sense to me from a real exposure and risk standpoint.
It's not doing anything to protect the adults and students. It might feel good, it might look good,
but it's actually hygiene theater.
YOUTUBER: You've got to be putting that disinfectant on these groceries
JOE ALLEN: There were youtube videos with tens of millions of views
telling people how to wipe and wash down every single item they bought at the grocery store.
NEWSCASTER: Covid outbreak at a spin class.
JOE ALLEN: But in reality, every high profile outbreak -- be it spin class, on a school bus,
choir practice -- they all share the same fundamental characteristics: time spent indoors,
no masks and low to no ventilation. Every single time.
NEWSCASTER: A Washington choir practice turns deadly.
JOE ALLEN: So by not acknowledging that this virus travels through the air,
I think it was a big failing.
NEWSCASTER: Tonight, researchers around the world
say the evidence shows the new coronavirus is likely airborne.
JOE ALLEN: My entire field has been sounding the alarm on this. Two hundred thirty-nine of us wrote
a letter to the World Health Organization bringing our collective voice from our field together to
urge them to recognize that airborne transmission was happening, and therefore recommend that people
add ventilation filtration to the list of things and measures they're already doing like mask
wearing. So it's been totally shocking and a gross failing in my view that it's taken a year for
CDC and others to recognize that this was important. We knew a year ago
healthy buildings needed to be the first line of defense against this novel coronavirus.
We do know about how to keep people safe from infectious diseases
indoors. I'm coming from a background doing forensic investigations of sick buildings so
this might be a cancer cluster, an office building, disease outbreak in a school,
and through that experience we know what controls are needed to keep people safe in any
indoor environment, be it from a radiological hazard, a chemical hazard, a physical hazard,
or in this case with Covid a biological hazard. We know how to assess a hazard,
we know how to put in appropriate controls to keep people safe. Things like higher ventilation rates,
better levels of filtration, reducing the occupancy or de-densifying our buildings.
So it's impossible to know why there's so much hesitancy by CDC and WHO and others,
but some of it ties back to a fundamental misunderstanding of respiratory aerosols.
This goes back to the outdated medical literature showing that respiratory aerosols -- when we talk
breathe or sing -- settle out of the air within six feet. The reality is these aerosols will
travel beyond six feet and they'll stay aloft for hours. In fact they'll accumulate indoors,
both at close contact and at distance, unless they are diluted out of the air through ventilation
or cleaned out of the air through filtration. And so we knew all of this early on and every
piece of evidence since last winter has further validated that hypothesis.
We know from basic aerosol physics that these particles will stay aloft. We have air sampling
data showing viable virus detected well beyond six feet. We have epidemiological evidence.
We've known this for a long time in my field -- building science, indoor air quality science,
aerosol science -- but largely that hasn't penetrated into the medical literature.
Many people early on and even today are failing to do these basic control measures like rolling down
your window in the car to bring in fresh outdoor air or doing that at home if someone is sick
or in an office building or a school bringing in more outdoor air
to dilute the build up of these respiratory aerosols.
What we've been recommending is achieving four to six air changes per hour through any combination
of better ventilation or filtration. That means you can open up your windows
to bring in more outdoor air, or run your mechanical system a little bit higher speeds
to bring in more outdoor air. When it's too cold and the windows have to be closed,
you can compensate by using better filters. So if you have a mechanical
system you want a higher grade filter on the recirculated air. And if you don't have that
you can use a portable air cleaner with a HEPA filter. These are plug and play devices that
can give you four or five or six air changes per hour very quickly and for relatively low cost.
Surface transmission -- it's called fomite transmission. A fomite is any surface that can act
as a source of transference. Fomite transmission can happen, it's just not happening a lot.
That doesn't mean we let our guard down when it comes to surfaces -- cleaning,
disinfection is important, particularly in high-risk contexts like healthcare
settings -- but for the average person, the way to break that transmission chain
is just through hand washing and using hand sanitizer frequently. Yes,
it's okay to accept the package that was delivered to your door or that if you get groceries you
don't need to wipe down everything. You simply put them away wash your hands when you're done.
We spend 90 percent of our time indoors and like it or not we've become an indoor species. And when
we think about it this way it becomes obvious and even intuitive that the indoor environment has an
outsized impact on our health. Covid has ushered in this new appreciation or awareness anyway
of just how much time people are spending indoors. For many people they are
essentially locked down in their home and others who are out and have to be at work are recognizing
that the way these are manufacturing facilities are hospitals, the way these are designed
determine whether or not they're getting sick.
NEWSCASTER: There are new fears over meat packing facilities where workers continue to get sick.
JOE ALLEN: The researchers in this healthy building or indoor air quality space -- that has
exploded, and that's a good thing. Who is going to go back to a building right now that isn't a
healthy building? Covid was an all-in moment for the world and the US has failed in our first year.
In terms of healthy buildings, I hope this pandemic catalyzes the movement such that we
no longer have buildings and health be a secondary aspect to our approach to the way we design and
operate our built environment. We have to have health as core and fundamental to our decisions
that we're making around our schools, homes and offices. And it's been an afterthought.
We've been stuck in this sick building era and my hope as we move into this healthy
building era where the focus is the health of all people in all buildings everywhere, every day.