Far-UVC: Technology Update with an Untapped Potential to Mitigate Airborne Infections

Bueno de Mesquita et al discuss technologies to help mitigate airborne infections. Clinicians and patients spent the fall and winter of 2022 grappling with the triple surge of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus. Meanwhile, a host of zoonotic diseases await the inevitable mutations that could fuel human-to-human transmission and the next pandemic. Because respiratory infections are transmitted through shared indoor air, strategies for prevention should embrace effective modalities for cleaning indoor air. As an analogy, we don't rely on vaccines to prevent waterborne illness, even though there is a vaccine against cholera: We rely on effective water treatment to provide safe drinking water that is free of the spectrum of disease-causing microbial agents. We should take a similar engineering approach to shared indoor air spaces.