Should You Turn Off The Air Conditioner If Someone In Your House Has The Virus? Here Is What We Know.

It is officially summer. We are talking hot, muggy, I need an air conditioner, summer.

So, what does that mean for the coronavirus? We have heard that air conditioning blows those germy droplets more than 6 feet.

Does that mean we shouldn’t be using an air conditioner?!? Say it isn’t so. This is supposed to be one of the hottest summers on record, and I need my air conditioner.

Here is what we know.

According to the CDC, an air conditioner at a restaurant in China blew droplets around the room, and infected ten people. Granted, there were like 80 people that were NOT infected, but still, TEN people were infected.

At this restaurant, the windows were not open, and the air conditioner just blew the recirculated air around the restaurant.

Researchers are saying that opening a window might have helped the situation.

So, should you turn off the air conditioner and open the windows??

Some experts will recommend that you should turn off air conditioning systems, and I don’t think that’s a good approach. If you don’t get enough fresh air, especially in the interior of a building, that will just create incubators of infection.

Qingyan Chen, Purdue University

Opening a window will help disperse the droplets, and you will get that fresh, outside air to circulate through the house.

What if someone in your house ACTIVELY has the coronavirus? What should you do then?

There are a couple things to do. First of all, open that window so you can get fresh air. Next, turn off the air conditioner. It will circulate that infected air throughout the house.

TURN OFF THE AIR CONDITIONER?!? But, it’s 100 degrees outside!

If it isn’t possible to turn off that air conditioner, keep that sick person away from vents that will circulate their sickie germs all throughout the house. Seal that intake vent up in their room if necessary.

If you decide to keep the air conditioner on, you should keep the temperature between 70 and 75 degrees.

The virus loses infectivity with increasing temperature, so keep your home less cold than you usually like it in the summer.

Ana Rule, assistant professor at the department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

So, to recap: fresh air is good. Open a window. Don’t turn off the air conditioner unless someone is sick. Keep a sick person isolate, and away from air vents. If you are using an air conditioner, keep it warmer than you normally would — between 70 and 75 degrees.

Sheesh that is a lot to take in!