doctor s surgery and get the news they have cancer, we can guarantee we will get urgent treatment. but we know this is really difficult if you are waiting for a diagnosis and you are waiting for a diagnosis and you are going through treatment and you are going through treatment and you are experiencing delay and disruption, macmillan cancer support is their view and we have nurses on the end of the phone able to offer advice and support and help you through the process. behind every one of the statistics is someone alone, potentially, really isolated and worried about the impact of any delay or disruption in their cancer care. , , , ., care. yes, the helplines are fantastically care. yes, the helplines are fantastically valuable - care. yes, the helplines are fantastically valuable and i care. yes, the helplines are - fantastically valuable and people listening to you will hear all of that and they will say, well, i absolutely accept every word you say but by the same token there wil
then they switched them back off again and the virus came back. so, vilas, basically, this was a hunch, wasn t it? yeah, it was. it was an idea. we didn t know it would work. i didn t know it would work. and luckily managed to get together a group of people, uh, engineers, scientists, doctors. and we went for it. when you got the results, what did you think? well, i think it s fair to say that we were all fairly gobsmacked by the results. uh, we were able to, uh, show that the covid virus was was in the air, measure how much is there, prove that we could get rid of it. it sounds simple, but finding a scientifically robust way of sampling the air is complex. vilas borrowed this device off a friend. it s normally used to test for anthrax. it traps all the viruses and bugs in a liquid which they analysed at a nearby lab specialising in infectious diseases.
they used the same technique that does the pcr covid tests you send away. so if you re honest, then when vilas first came to you with the idea you didn t think it would work? i was very dubious about not whether the filtration devices would work, but about whether d we be able to detect things in the air at a sufficient level to actually show that it was there. now, i know you found the coronavirus, but you found a whole load of other stuff, too. what was it? and was it potentially harmful? yeah, that was a bit of a surprise. the amount of things that we detected in the air was quite a lot. we detected a range of different viruses. of different bacteria, but also fungi. some of them are potentially problematic for human health. what we don t know is if there s sufficient amounts in the air to cause an infection and whether it s a great risk. most covid wards are makeshift. they simply aren t designed to filter the air. it needs more research. but this hunch experiment has the potential
a team in cambridge has shown that an off the shelf air filter can potentially remove almost all infectious airborne coronavirus from a hospital ward. scientists at the universityjoined with doctors at addenbrooke s hospital to see just how much difference an air filter makes and their experiment produced dramatic results, that could be used to make hospitals and other public buildings safer. here s our science correspondent richard westcott. there s evidence that the coronavirus can spread through tiny droplets floating in the air. when people cough, laugh, sneeze, even breathe. so intensive care doctor vilas had an idea. would off the shelf air purifiers stop the virus floating around a covid ward? the results were dramatic. they tested the air without the machines, first of all, and, for five days, they found tiny droplets of the virus floating around. then they switched the machines on and the virus went, for five days.
that we were all fairly gobsmacked by the results. uh, we were able to, uh, show that the covid virus was was in the air, measure how much is there, prove that we could get rid of it. it sounds simple, but finding a scientifically robust way of sampling the air is complex. vilas borrowed this device off a friend. it s normally used to test for anthrax. it traps all the viruses and bugs in a liquid which they analysed at a nearby lab specialising in infectious diseases. they used the same technique that does the pcr covid tests you send away. so if you re honest, then when vilas first came to you with the idea you didn t think it would work? i was very dubious about not whether the filtration devices would work, but about whether d we be able to detect things in the air at a sufficient level