Yes, SARS-CoV-2, causing COVID-19, can be infectious for people in Indoor Air.
Spanish National Research Council among other scientific institutions, states: “SARS-CoV-2 drifts through the air, being part of several different particle sizes from drops to aerosols, and remaining active up to 3 hours” (1)
LIGHTDIS Upper Room fixture’s, disinfect indoor air inactivating SARS-CoV-2, reducing airborne infection possibility among persons.
Conventionally, medicine studies make distinction between drops (size over 5 micrometers), and aerosols or microdrops (size under 5 micrometers), despite in reality, particle size distribution when breathing, coughing or sneezing is a continuous size range. Drops, once emitted by persons, get smaller as the contained water evaporates. All sizes, microdrops or drops, are virus loaded.
In a place where infected persons are present, these will emit drops and microdrops loaded with viruses when speaking, coughing, sneezing or simply breathing. Drops will land sooner than microdrops, which can remain airborne during hours or days. SARS-CoV-2 can remain active while airborne, up to 3 hours. (2)
Indoor environments with high concentration of infected persons, can have bigger viral loads in air. A study carried out in Japan concludes that infection is 19 times more probable in indoor than outdoor (3).
In several Wuhan’s Hospitals SARS-CoV-2, was detected in indoor air of different areas, and in different particle size range during COVID-19 December 2019 (4)
(1) Emisión y exposición a SARS-CoV-2 y opciones de filtración Instituto de Diagnóstico Ambiental y Estudios del Agua (IDAEA), CSIC Informe v3, 15 abril 2020
(2) Van Doremalen et al., 2020. Aerosol and Surface Stability of SARS-CoV-2 as Compared with SARSCoV-1. The New England Journal of Medicine.
(3) Nishiura et al., 2020. Closed environments facilitate secondary transmission of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
(4) Liu Y., Ning, Z., chen, Y. et al., 2020. Aerodynamic Characteristics and RNA Concentration of SARS-CoV-2 Aerosol in Wuhan Hospitals during COVID-19 Outbreak.
