scholarly journals Detection of Suspended SARS-CoV-2 in Indoor Air Using an Electrostatic Sampler

Author(s):  
Kyohei Fukuda ◽  
Mie Yoshida ◽  
Kensuke Noto ◽  
Kouichi Kitabayashi ◽  
Shinjirou Katsushima ◽  
...  

Abstract A prototype virus sampler using electrostatic precipitation has been developed to investigate aerosol infection by SARS-CoV-2. The sampler consists of a discharge electrode placed inside a vial, and a thin layer of viral lysis buffer at the bottom, working as a collection electrode. The sampler was operated with the sampling air flow rate of 40 L/min. Collection efficiency of the sampler is about 80% for 25nm to 5.0µm diameter particles. We sampled the air of a food court of a commercial facility, a connecting corridor of a clouded train station, and two office rooms (A and B) in September 2021, just after the 5th peak of COVID-19 in Japan. The analysis using a RT-qPCR detected the virus RNA in the air of the office A, B and the food court. Estimated concentration of the virus in the air determined by calibration curve was 2.0 x 102, 7.8 x 102, and 0.6 - 2.4 x 102 copies/m3, in the office A, B, and the food court, respectively. These results indicate that the sampler using electrostatic precipitation can detect SARS-CoV-2 in indoor air. It could be developed as a risk assessment method for aerosol infection.

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 627-640 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shi Xianwu ◽  
Qiu Jufei ◽  
Chen Bingrui ◽  
Zhang Xiaojie ◽  
Guo Haoshuang ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Zuzhen Ji ◽  
Dirk Pons ◽  
John Pearse

Successful implementation of Health and Safety (H&S) systems requires an effective mechanism to assess risk. Existing methods focus primarily on measuring the safety aspect; the risk of an accident is determined based on the product of severity of consequence and likelihood of the incident arising. The health component, i.e., chronic harm, is more difficult to assess. Partially, this is due to both consequences and the likelihood of health issues, which may be indeterminate. There is a need to develop a quantitative risk measurement for H&S risk management and with better representation for chronic health issues. The present paper has approached this from a different direction, by adopting a public health perspective of quality of life. We have then changed the risk assessment process to accommodate this. This was then applied to a case study. The case study showed that merely including the chronic harm scales appeared to be sufficient to elicit a more detailed consideration of hazards for chronic harm. This suggests that people are not insensitive to chronic harm hazards, but benefit from having a framework in which to communicate them. A method has been devised to harmonize safety and harm risk assessments. The result was a comprehensive risk assessment method with consideration of safety accidents and chronic health issues. This has the potential to benefit industry by making chronic harm more visible and hence more preventable.


2021 ◽  
Vol 420 ◽  
pp. 129893
Author(s):  
Zijian Liu ◽  
Wende Tian ◽  
Zhe Cui ◽  
Honglong Wei ◽  
Chuankun Li

2021 ◽  
Vol 102 ◽  
pp. 102134
Author(s):  
Junjiang He ◽  
Tao Li ◽  
Beibei Li ◽  
Xiaolong Lan ◽  
Zhiyong Li ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hamid Reza Marateb ◽  
Maja von Cube ◽  
Ramin Sami ◽  
Shaghayegh Haghjooy Javanmard ◽  
Marjan Mansourian ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Already at hospital admission, clinicians require simple tools to identify hospitalized COVID-19 patients at high risk of mortality. Such tools can significantly improve resource allocation and patient management within hospitals. From the statistical point of view, extended time-to-event models are required to account for competing risks (discharge from hospital) and censoring so that active cases can also contribute to the analysis. Methods We used the hospital-based open Khorshid COVID Cohort (KCC) study with 630 COVID-19 patients from Isfahan, Iran. Competing risk methods are used to develop a death risk chart based on the following variables, which can simply be measured at hospital admission: sex, age, hypertension, oxygen saturation, and Charlson Comorbidity Index. The area under the receiver operator curve was used to assess accuracy concerning discrimination between patients discharged alive and dead. Results Cause-specific hazard regression models show that these baseline variables are associated with both death, and discharge hazards. The risk chart reflects the combined results of the two cause-specific hazard regression models. The proposed risk assessment method had a very good accuracy (AUC = 0.872 [CI 95%: 0.835–0.910]). Conclusions This study aims to improve and validate a personalized mortality risk calculator based on hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The risk assessment of patient mortality provides physicians with additional guidance for making tough decisions.


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