The economic and social disruption due to COVID-19, the disease caused by a coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2, has devastated countless people around the world. This ongoing global pandemic has not only changed the way we operate on a daily basis, but it has changed our views of many different aspects of life.

Many people in the environmental industry have heard of the terms “sick building syndrome” and “indoor air quality” (IAQ), but substantially fewer understand the concept of “building bake-out”. 

The fundamental idea on containment is simple: keep one or more contaminants in or out of an area. Quite literally, a containment is an isolation system.

Protecting return-to-work individuals who had been restricted from gathering in an effort to minimize the spread of COVID-19, and efforts to reopen public indoor spaces safely have led to a lot of interest in how HVAC systems may be adjusted to reduce the spread of the virus. 

At the time of this writing, we’re starting to see the much-anticipated second wave of COVID-19 infections and deaths due to colder temperatures settling over much of the U.S. and people moving activities indoors.