{"doi":"10.1093/ofid/ofaf196","title":"Human Source Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Aerosol Transmission to Remote Sentinel Hamsters","abstract":"Background: Bioaerosol-mediated transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) via building ventilation systems has yet to be convincingly demonstrated. We used the South African Airborne Infections Research (AIR) facility near Pretoria to study human-to-animal (H2A) transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in newly diagnosed patients. While the facility was built to study tuberculosis transmission, this was its first adaptation to study H2A virus transmission. Methods: Patients with clinically confirmed coronavirus disease 2019 were housed for up to 4 days in in the AIR facility with continuously exhausting patient ward air to hamsters housed in animal exposure rooms. After a 3-week exposure period, animals were held for an additional week to allow for antibody development. Animal sera were analyzed for anti-spike and plaque reduction activities and lung samples for pathology. Results: Seven patients provided ≥400 in-residence hours over a 17-day period. Pair-housed naive golden Syrian hamsters (n = 216) received continuous exposure to mixed patient ward exhaust. Serum analyses revealed anti-SARS-CoV-2 immunoglobulin G in 58% of animals tested. Plaque reduction assays on 7 high-titer serum samples revealed neutralizing activity. Conclusions: These results support the concept that viral bioaerosols generated from patients remain infectious over long-distance transport through a building ventilation system. The seroconversion among sentinel animals supports the long-held belief that airborne infections manifest as a stochastic rather than deterministic event that is subject to a threshold dose effect. Further confirmatory studies are necessary to characterize the relationship between the bioaerosol delivered and the infections that result in this controlled H2A transmission model.","journal":"Open Forum Infectious Diseases","year":2025,"id":552200,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9549,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1278053,"name":"Michael R. Barer","orcid":"0000-0002-0377-3100","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":802964,"name":"Veronica Ueckermann","orcid":"0000-0002-4419-3583","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":259610,"name":"Brandon J. Beddingfield","orcid":"0000-0002-9438-1304","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1448679,"name":"David Cordier","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1327827,"name":"P. Bernard Fourie","orcid":"0000-0002-1630-3554","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":555494,"name":"Richard L. Vincent","orcid":"0000-0003-3453-4070","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1448680,"name":"Sego Dibobo","orcid":null,"position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1448681,"name":"Toby VanReenen","orcid":null,"position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1409949,"name":"Paul Jensen","orcid":"0000-0001-7367-4952","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1448682,"name":"Oliva De Kock","orcid":null,"position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1448683,"name":"Elsabe De Kock","orcid":null,"position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":765793,"name":"Edward A. Nardell","orcid":"0000-0002-5323-3196","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":218444,"name":"Chad J. Roy","orcid":"0000-0002-1710-6974","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":23,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:54:33.203144Z","pmid":"40256039","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}