Chinese researchers: Service industry hugely affected, after nine infected with COVID-19 via air-conditioning

• 29 April 2020
• International News
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Chinese researchers have announced that nine people from three healthy families have been found to be infected with the COVID-19 virus after sitting at tables next to an infected person while dining in a windowless restaurant in Guangzhou, China. They have theorized that the air-conditioning in the restaurant could have blown the viral droplets from one person to the others, according to a research letter from the Guangzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention in March.

Chinese researchers explained that the source of the outbreak was a 63-year-old woman who went to a hospital and tested positive for COVID-19. Two weeks later, nine other people, who seemed to have no other contact with previous cases except for their time when they were in the same restaurant with the old lady, were found to be COVID-19 positive. On that day, she went to that restaurant with no noticeable symptoms and transmitted the disease to her four relatives and five other diners in two other families.

It is known that COVID-19 spreads the virus via droplets out of saliva when talking and that tends not to float farther than one meter. For the Guangzhou restaurant case above, the three families were sitting further apart from the infected person than that one-meter distance.

Based on this, researchers have argued that the air-conditioning in the restaurant could have transmitted the viral droplets with the coronavirus to other persons.

Notably, the Chinese researchers’ findings confirm that air-conditioning can be a major agent of transmitting the virus. This is after the case of the Diamond Princess Cruise ship in Japan, where the AC system was suspected to have added to the infected numbers from 10 to more than 600 within just two weeks. The case was reported by the South China Morning Post (SCMP) last month. (Read more)

For the infectious case in Guangzhou, Chinese researchers estimated the huge impact on service industries especially restaurants across the country. For instance, a huge number of restaurants have been closed resulting in large numbers of unemployed workers and decreases in sales.

This huge impact on the service sector has happened all over the world. Likewise, more than 8 million restaurant employees in the USA have been laid off so far, and the industry will lose US$80 billion in sales by the end of April, according to an estimate by the National Restaurant Association on 27 April 2020.

In Cambodia, the service sector has also been seriously affected. Recently, the Cambodian government ordered the shutdown of all casinos, karaoke parlors, beer gardens, and cinemas in Cambodia. Some restaurants in the country have also closed doors because of a lack of customers. However, a precise assessment of the impact of COVID-19 on the Cambodian service sector is not yet available. (Read more)

As a responsive measure for the sector, scientists advised that when reopening restaurants should need new rules and should reduce capacity. Those new rules, as they warn that may be hard to enforce, include, but not limited to, paying through touchless methods, using disposable menus, seeing staff members wearing face masks and gloves, improving the validation system, and limiting room capacity through setting maximum numbers and the like.

With this regard, Construction and Property Magazine has continuously published a number of articles relating to measures to maintain office and commercial buildings during COVID 19. (Read more)

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