The Institute for Pandemics is collaborating with the Department of Civil & Mineral Engineering to host a lecture by Professor Yuguo Li from the University of Hong Kong for the CivMin Distinguished Lecture Series.
Although airborne route for SARS-CoV-2 was recognized in early 2021, more than a year into the pandemic, we would have expected that the transmission chains should have been intercepted by improved ventilation by now, but instead the pandemic continued, worsened, and caused many more deaths. The long-range transmission was very likely predominant, and transmission in insufficiently ventilated spaces might have sustained the pandemic, particularly for the Delta and Omicron variants. A predominant short-range airborne route would probably not sustain a high transmissivity as seen from the Omicron outbreaks in late 2022 in China. In his talk, Professor Li will explore the history of our understanding of respiratory infection transmission, challenges in defining dilution requirement, improving ventilation, a new concept of effective dilution and future research needs.