Simulation-based study of COVID-19 outbreak associated with air-conditioning in a restaurant
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Abstract
COVID-19 has shown a high potential of transmission via virus-carrying aerosols as supported by growing evidence. However, detailed investigations that draw direct links between aerosol transport and virus infection are still lacking. To fill in the gap, we conducted a systematic computational fluid dynamics (CFD)-based investigation of indoor airflow and the associated aerosol transport in a restaurant setting, where likely cases of airflow-induced infection of COVID-19 caused by asymptomatic individuals were widely reported by the media. We employed an advanced in-house large eddy simulation solver and other cutting-edge numerical methods to resolve complex indoor processes simultaneously, including turbulence, flow–aerosol interplay, thermal effect, and the filtration effect by air conditioners. Using the aerosol exposure index derived from the simulation, we are able to provide a spatial map of the airborne infection risk under different settings. Our results have shown a remarkable direct linkage between regions of high aerosol exposure index and the reported infection patterns in the restaurant, providing strong support to the airborne transmission occurring in this widely reported incident. Using flow structure analysis and reverse-time tracing of aerosol trajectories, we are able to further pinpoint the influence of environmental parameters on the infection risks and highlight the need for more effective preventive measures, e.g., placement of shielding according to the local flow patterns. Our research, thus, has demonstrated the capability and value of high-fidelity CFD tools for airborne infection risk assessment and the development of effective preventive measures.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.12.10.20247403: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
Experimental Models: Cell Lines Sentences Resources AC1, AC4, and AC5 have a size of 1.6 m ×0.5 m ×0.25 m (length × width × height), while AC2 and AC3 have a size of 1 m × 0.5 m × 0.25 m. AC2suggested: ECACC Cat# 86061902, RRID:CVCL_4102)Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.12.10.20247403: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
Experimental Models: Cell Lines Sentences Resources AC1, AC4, and AC5 have a size of 1.6 m ×0.5 m ×0.25 m (length × width × height), while AC2 and AC3 have a size of 1 m × 0.5 m × 0.25 m. AC2suggested: ECACC Cat# 86061902, RRID:CVCL_4102)Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: Please consider improving the rainbow (“jet”) colormap(s) used on pages 11, 12, 13, 15, 17 and 19. At least one figure is not accessible to readers with colorblindness and/or is not true to the data, i.e. not perceptually uniform.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
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