Investigation of hospital indoor air quality for the presence of SARS-Cov-2

Masoumbeigi, Hossein; Ghanizadeh, Ghader; Yousefi Arfaei, Reza; Heydari, Soleyman; Goodarzi, Hassan; Dorostkar Sari, Ruhollah; Tat, Mehdi

PURPOSE: Unidentified dynamics for the causative agent of COVID-19, SARS-Cov-2, led to the critical public health issue. Suspicion for the airborne potential of SARS-Cov-2 is an important problem for its transmission and relevant epidemics. This research investigated hospital indoor air quality to SARS-Cov-2 occurrence and determination its air born potential. METHODS: The site study was a referral hospital with 630 beds for admitting of COVID-19 patients. Air sampling was done (n = 31) on selected wards including Emergency 1, Emergency 2, bedridden (4-B, 10-D), ICU 2, ICU 3, CT-SCAN, and laundry. The average temperature and relative humidities were 22 ± 1 °C and 43 percent respectively. All glass impinger used for sampling in which the sampling pumps capacities were 5 and 40 L.min(− 1). Sampling duration time was 20 and 15 minutes and 100 to 1000 L of air were gathered. All parts of the sampling equipment were completely disinfected by hot water, ethanol (70%), chlorine solution (1000 ppm), hot water (70 °C for 1 min) and washed with distilled water. The transmitting media (7 ml) was injected into impinger and residual of this media (2 ml) was sent to the virology laboratory within 2 hours and preserved on refrigerator < 4 °C. Analysis of samples was performed by RT-PCR and repeated for accuracy control. RESULTS: All of the samples were negative for SARS-Cov-2 occurrence. These results showed that SARS-Cov-2 had not airborne potential in this hospital. CONCLUSIONS: Although SARS-Cov-2 similar to the SARS virus but, SARS-Cov-2 is not an airborne virus.