Engineering Controls and Technologies to Enhance Safety in the COVID-19 Pandemic Landscape: Lessons for Laboratories and Non-Laboratories.

Abstract

The global SARS-CoV-2 pandemic ushered in a new way of life in a short time, with many lasting impacts that have yet to be fully realized. This pandemic threat landscape resulted in massive efforts to increase safety, minimize person-to-person transmission, and rethink how society approaches personal and collective health issues. The buildings and environments in which we live, work, and learn now became environments that pose new risks. As a result, many institutions began asking what improvements could be made to those environments to reduce the spread of infection of SARS-CoV-2 and other infectious diseases. The authors conducted a review of past projects and emerging technologies to evaluate which applications in containment laboratories could represent an example of how engineering controls can improve safety by protecting the workers inside the laboratories as well as the public interfacing the laboratories. Engineering controls, technology, and safety systems are hallmarks of modern containment laboratories that may provide some context into extrapolating these elements into non-laboratory environments, providing there is coordination with a risk assessment methodology. In this study, the authors explore new technologies proposed for controlling SARS-CoV-2 in heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems, and potential impacts to the operations and maintenance of those systems.