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Description
The initiative aims to determine and characterize airborne SARS-CoV-2 in different outdoor and indoor environments in Oslo, including healthcare facilities, using a protocol that has been developed by the Portuguese partners, that are developing work in the topic for the last 18 months. In addition to this, the Norwegian partner will transfer knowledge on environmental virology and in particular, viral viability, by developing a PMAX treatment to reduce PCR signals from noninfectious virus, as done before by the partner to other environmental viruses, allowing to infer on SARS-CoV-2
Summary of the results
Entitled ‘AIRCOV: SARS-CoV-2 presence and infectivity on indoor air samples’, the project was developed with specialists in environmental virology from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (Oslo, Norway) and the ICBAS – School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, Porto University (Porto, Portugal) aiming to develop a method to monitor airborne SARS-CoV-2 and to assess its viability. The project also financed a short-term scientific mission with a strong focus on the transfer-ofknowledge regarding monitoring of airborne viruses while also acquiring an alternative method to assess viral viability in air samples without the need to replicate the virus in cells or animals. The research project culminated in the publication of a study where the enzymatic pre-treatment protocol learned in Norway was applied, with another publication currently under preparation.