[White Paper] Best practices for environmental detection and monitoring of airborne viruses with Coriolis® air samplers

The appearance of coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and the subsequent pandemic of COVID-19 has shown biosafety to be one of the biggest challenges of this century. While scientists are still deciphering the transmission behavior of the virus, public health authorities struggle to elaborate strategies to ensure the safety of their citizens post confinement.  As with most respiratory viruses, the environment is an important potential source of contamination. A recent study has found that SARS-CoV-2 can remain viable in aerosols for at least 3 hours, and up to days on surfaces. Reliable environmental air monitoring solutions become critical to safely reopen public areas such as schools or restaurants. Such solutions will also help understand and prevent the infection of healthcare workers in hospitals.

The detection of viruses in air samples presents many challenges: compared to other microorganisms, viruses are present in the air at a very diluted ratio which translates in the necessity of sampling a relatively large amount of air to have reliable analyses results – a few m3. The integrity of the virus also has to be maintained through each step of the workflow to have reliable virus viability estimates. Traditional air sampling devices are often impedimented by low airflow rates, which translates into a time-consuming sampling process for viruses. Bertin Technologies has developed air samplers that can be used for the detection and monitoring of airborne viruses in a wide range of environments, from hospitals to office buildings.

In this White Paper, we present the best practices for virus monitoring in air samples and describe how experts have used Bertin’s Coriolis Ò air samplers in a wide range of environments: hospitals, farms, and industrial settings, for the detection of different airborne viruses:  RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus) rotaviruses, influenza A and bacteriophages.