Dealing with the risks of exposure to airborne coronavirus: An interview with Lidia Morawska, PhD

COVID-19 has been a humanitarian crisis with a public health dimension in Bangladesh and beyond. Health service capacity is being redirected and travel restrictions, though key to limiting the spread of the virus, are affecting access to healthcare. Fear is keeping people in need of treatment away from clinics. What’s more, people are often faced with an “infodemic” – no less pernicious than the pandemic itself – that makes it difficult for non-experts to differentiate good information from mis- and disinformation, rumors and fake news.

In this uncertain environment, we at friends2050 invited Dr. Lidia Morawska to discuss the different ways the novel coronavirus can spread, especially its transmissibility not just through droplets but also as aerosols emitted during breathing and talking, for example. Her findings on the aerosolized transmission of the virus has led to some recent revisions of the personal safety guidelines recommended by the World Health Organization, among others. She conducts fundamental and applied research in the interdisciplinary field of air quality and its impact on human health and the environment, with a specific focus on science of airborne particulate matter.

Professor Morawska is a physicist and received her doctorate at the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland for research on radon and its progeny. Prior to joining QUT, she spent several years in Canada conducting research first at McMaster University in Hamiltonas a Fellow of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and later at the University of Toronto. She is an author of over six hundred journal papers, book chapters and conference papers. She is a past President of the International Society of Indoor Air Quality and Climate.

The recorded conversation has been orchestrated by Sohail Hasnie whose day job is that of Principal Energy Specialist at the Asian Development Bank (ADB) based in Manila, the Philippines, and was moderated by Sam G. Samdani whose day job is that of Senior Industry Knowledge Expert at McKinsey & Company based in Summit, New Jersey, USA. Their friendship dates back to 1977 when they started their two-year boarding school journey at Dhaka Residential Model School & College for their higher secondary education in Bangladesh.

What follows is a transcript of the conversation that has been edited by Mr. Samdani for clarity and legibility, and shared in two parts or installments.

Part I focuses on some of the surprising ways the novel coronavirus can spread from person to person