Current COVID-19 testing strategies include options like viral testing and antibody testing of individuals, as well as surveillance options like wastewater testing. Another surveillance option includes testing for transmission through indoor air systems, but this monitoring technique hasn’t been implemented as widely — yet.

University of Oregon architecture professor Kevin Van Den Wymelenberg directs the school’s  Energy Studies in Buildings Laboratory, where he works toward improving global health and sustainability through architectural design. Van Den Wymelenberg said it’s clear the virus spreads through the air, specifically through indoor air.

“That is what we are good at,” he said. “We are good at figuring out indoor air.”

Related: “Flushing out the virus: Why UO isn’t testing your waste and OSU is”

Van Den Wymelenberg also directs UO’s Institute for Health in the Built Environment, which conducts and applies research surrounding the microbiomes and carbon footprints of buildings.. The institute had people who have studied microbes in buildings for a decade all working together, he said. 

Across all of his work, Van Den Wymelenberg said, the common question is, “How do we make healthier buildings?”

During the pandemic, that is what he has been working on. Van Den Wymelenberg researched the airborne transmission of COVID-19 related to childbirth — which was published in a peer-reviewed paper. He also worked on identifying COVID-19 in healthcare heating, ventilation and air conditioning units in a paper currently undergoing peer review.

Van Den Wymelenberg said these papers have led to a wide range of work. He and others from various Oregon universities — including between 10-15 faculty and over 10 students at UO — are looking for sampling techniques to do aerosol testing faster and cheaper.

His “holy grail”? Implementing a “viral smoke detector” in buildings. This would be a tool used to monitor the air in real time and notify occupants if COVID-19 was detected.

“The technology is completely available to do it,” Van Den Wymelenberg said. “It’s just never been engineered to solve that problem.”

He and faculty from universities like University of California, Davis and Oregon Health and Science University have done research and work toward this goal themselves, but Van Den Wymelenberg is also working with industries to explore technologies that could be purposed, repurposed or combined to reach his goal.

Enviral Tech is one of those companies. Based in Eugene, the company provides COVID-19 surveillance for long-term senior care facilities, according to its website. Enviral Tech sells surface testing kits and has a waitlist available for air test kits.

Van Den Wymelenberg worked as a science advisor for the company, he said. In early March, when Enviral Tech was just launching, he collaborated with the company in a study of senior care facilities around the Northwest, he said.

Enviral Tech’s air testing kits detect the virus using an air intake device with a fitted filter, according to its site. The filters are removed and changed for conducting samplings and mailed to the company for testing. With the surface kit, clients swab high-traffic surfaces. 

Surface swabs in strategic locations can act in place of air intake devices, Van Den Wymelenberg said, because microbes that were once in the air eventually settle to surfaces. Ideal locations might include air grills or other locations where air is being sucked out of a room or building, he said.

Enviral Tech has just a 24-hour turnaround time for test results, according to its website.

“Which I think is phenomenal actually,” Van Den Wymelenberg said. “You can really turn that into actionable information.”

Data from air and surface sampling can be used to guide future contact tracing and testing, evaluate cleaning protocols and implement enhanced air filtration if needed, he said. 

Enviral Tech’s 24-hour turnaround is helping Van Den Wymelenberg and his team learn about limits of viral detection and what level of abundance might be a good threshold to sound a viral smoke detector or alarm. 

This research is also helping him and his team start learning about collecting environmental monitoring data while considering questions regarding liability, communication and occupant safety.

“We can learn all of that on this 24-hour turnaround as we are working on technology that can do it faster,” Van Den Wymelenberg said.

He and his team are currently exploring this technology in private enterprises and on multiple campuses, including UO.

“It’s all research,” he said, “and so the goal will be that we can learn how to consume this kind of information so that it can scale and become part of our public health strategy in the future.”

Van Den Wymelenberg is eager to translate his research into practice, he said, and is looking forward to using this type of data to guide action. 

Some locations — such as those that needed to remain open during the pandemic — already implement aerosol monitoring as part of their regular practice, and Van Den Wymelenberg hopes to see this become more widespread.

The dream, he said, is to implement his research in the places that do need to stay open — such as hospitals and senior care facilities — and use the findings to “guide every kind of building in terms of a surveillance technique and building operations protocols.”

Even if there is a COVID-19 vaccine released tomorrow, he said, we still don’t know what would happen. For example, we’ve been dealing with the flu for years, and every year we still care about it. Van Den Wymelenberg said his “best case prediction” is that COVID-19 settles down to something like that.

In the end, there will likely be an integrated surveillance program involved in public health operations, Van Den Wymelenberg said. It might include wastewater testing as well as building aerosol monitoring, which both have positives and negatives.

“My hope is that this has been enough of a wakeup call that we need to do a better job monitoring microbes in our buildings,” Van Den Wymelenberg said, “and that it will become part of our public health strategy and it will become part of our building operations protocols.”