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CO2 helps viruses stay alive longer in the air

CO2 is a good proxy for how much exhaled — and potentially infectious — air is in a room. New research suggests the more CO2 there is, the more virus-friendly the air becomes.

On March 23, 2020, the same day Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a nationwide lockdown to curb the widening outbreak of SARS-CoV-2, Haddrell got an email from a colleague at Bristol’s veterinary school, located on a farm about a 40-minute drive south. So when his group used CELEBS to systematically tease apart all the fundamental processes that could be causing SARS-CoV-2 to die in respiratory particles — temperature, humidity, salt content — and still found that pH played the biggest role, they didn’t put out the results as a preprint before it was published last summer. Together, the papers make a case for the need to improve the quality of indoor air, said Josh Santarpia, an expert in aerosol transmission of disease at the University of Nebraska Medical Center who was not involved in the study.

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