Welcome to IVEA
Seasonal influenza is a recurring respiratory illness that affects all regions of the globe. Every year influenza viruses infect 10‐20 % of the global population, causing an estimated one billion cases of disease, hundreds of thousands of deaths, and an annual economic burden of billions of dollars. To curb the public health and economic impacts of influenza, health care policy aims to reduce the transmission of influenza virus. However, an incomplete understanding of the modes of influenza transmission currently hampers progress towards this goal. Increasing evidence points to expiratory aerosol particles as vehicles for the transmission of influenza virus. Inactivation of viruses in aerosols would thus limit influenza transmission, but the responsible inactivating processes are largely unknown.
IVEA is an SNF-Sinergia project that brings together doctors and researchers from EPFL, University of Zurich and ETH-Zurich to study how ambient conditions, in particular relative humidity (RH) and temperature (T), affect the infectivity of influenza viruses in expiratory aerosol. RH and T have frequently been found to affect virus infectivity, though their effects depend on the aerosol matrix. What is lacking is a mechanistic understanding of the effects of ambient conditions on virus stability in expiratory aerosols. In IVEA, we aim to determine how RH and T control the physicochemical properties of expiratory aerosols, and how these in turn affect influenza virus infectivity.
IVEA News Feed
