Bioaerosols and airborne transmission: Integrating biological complexity into our perspective

There is broad consensus that airborne disease transmission continues to be the thematic focus of COVID-19, the complexities and understanding of which continues to complicate our attempts to control this pandemic. Masking used as both personal protection and source reduction predominates our society at present and, other than vaccination, remains the public health measure that will faithfully reduce aerosol transmission and overall disease burden (Gandhi and Marr, 2021). Early in the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, and especially after preliminary recognition of airborne transmission, there was considerable efforts in the application of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling aerosols as well as risk models calculations, the products of which were detailed in the literature (Morawska et al., 2020; Buonanno et al., 2020a) and even disseminated in media destined for the public. As the respiratory pathway emerged as the dominant exposure pathway for SARSCoV-2 transmission, much of what was promoted from CFD was applied to risk models to estimate community infection and in some cases expected clinical outcome. COVID-19 proved to fit the profile of an obligate respiratory-transmitted pathogen, and the plausibility of using aerosol modeling when silhouetted with emerging COVID-19 epidemiology provided ample evidence for promotion of masking and ventilation optimization as a required public health measure. Masking is often included as a factor in developed risk models and it remains an essentially important part of our response to this airborne threat, and ultimately will agnostically reduce disease burden although efforts to improve ventilation in indoor spaces remain a challenge. Arguably the most important concept in the airborne transmission of infectious agents is the biologically active componentry that comprises the aerosol particle and the functional dynamic nature of particle contents. Specifically, the innate generation, transport, and ultimate deposition/disposition of bioaerosols; the aerosol particles that nearly exclusively harbor bioactive components, including viruses, when disease agents are transmitted through the air.

Automated summary

There is consensus that airborne transmission is the main focus of COVID-19, and masking and ventilation optimization are important public health measures to reduce aerosol transmission. The biologically active components of aerosol particles are key concepts in the airborne transmission of infectious agents.