The appearance of SARS-CoV-2 and the subsequent pandemic of COVID-19 has shown biosafety to be one of the biggest challenges of this century. As with most respiratory viruses, the environment is an important potential source of contamination. If no vaccine is to be found before 2021, then reliable air monitoring solutions will become critical to safely open public areas.

The detection of viruses in air samples presents many challenges: compared to other microorganisms, viruses are present in the air at a very diluted ratio which translates in the necessity of sampling a relatively large amount of air to have reliable analyses results. The integrity of the virus also has to be maintained through each step of the workflow to have reliable virus viability estimates.

In this webinar, we present the best practices for virus monitoring in air samples and describe how experts have used Bertin’s Coriolis air samplers in a wide range of environments, from hospitals to office buildings.