Understanding how communicable diseases spread is the key to their control.
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During the current SARS-2 coronavirus pandemic, it has become increasingly clear that aerosol transmission is the dominant mode of spread of disease. However, public health authorities and many hospitals remain reluctant to acknowledge the airborne nature of SARS-2 coronavirus transmission.
In her inaugural keynote address, Dr. Kimberly Prather, Distinguished Chair in Atmospheric Chemistry and Distinguished Professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at University of California, San Diego, discusses the science behind aerosol transmission of viral infectious diseases, and the body of evidence that now demonstrates dominant airborne transmission of our current pandemic, as well as the implications of aerosol for pandemic control, including her own work to make schools in San Diego safer.
Dr. Prather’s address was followed by a roundtable of international experts in the fields of engineering, medicine and architecture, who discussed the challenges in knowledge translation posed by this paradigm shift, as well as the institutional and cultural barriers it has highlighted.