ALBANY — While the Capital Region and other parts of the state have entered Phase 4 of the COVID-19 re-opening, malls remain closed as Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his team study the best way to protect visitors.
Earlier in the week he said that malls might need to be equipped with HEPA or High Efficiency Particulate Air filters before they can safely re-open.
A true HEPA filter will block the corona virus which is 0.125 microns. (The cross section of a human hair is 50 microns for comparison).
And while that’s reassuring, many experts say the coronavirus is spread largely through direct person to person contact or through the tiny water droplets we constantly excrete when walking, talking and just breathing.
Cuomo later amended his statement to say MERV-13 filters may be adequate.
MERV stands for Minimum Efficiency Reporting Value.
They are rated from 1 to 16 with 16 offering the most filtration.
A MERV-13 by most accounts could filter out the water droplets that might contain the corona virus.
Either way, mall operators, retailers and local politicians say they need to reopen soon to stop the financial hemorrhaging they are experiencing.
Some mall managers say they have already started improvements.
“We have had an extensive review of our system by engineers and trade experts; we increased air filtration, we increased fresh air intake and we increased air circulation to bolster the quality of air within our shopping centers,” said Crossgates mall Marketing Director Jennifer Smith.
Installing HEPA or MERV filters can be a lot more complicated than it sounds, noted Nellie Brown, director of Cornell University’s Workplace Health & Safety Programs.
“The problem is, what are you going to do if you have an older system that can’t tolerate that kind of upgrade,” she said. Brown explained that the ventilation fans in large buildings need to be powerful enough to circulate air through the high-density filters.
Much of that depends, not on the age of the actual structure, but on that of the HVAC, or heating, ventilation and air conditioning system.
Large buildings like malls always use a fair amount of recirculated air, Brown added, to help maintain the heat in winter and air conditioned coolness in summer. So the filters are important.
On the other hand, malls typically have high ceilings, which gives virus-containing droplets plenty of room to rise and dissipate from actions like coughing, sneezing or shouting.
Of more concern, she said, are the droplets that come from normal activities like walking or talking in which some droplets inevitably escape, stay suspended and fall to the floor.
As much as filtration, Brown said she worries about maintaining social distancing in malls, where people tend to congregate and gather. Another worry is the smaller stores where social distancing is hard to maintain.
“My concern with them from the standpoint of COVID is they serve as gathering places,” she said of malls.
Nor are malls the only institutions looking at revamping their filtration systems.
“We are early in the stages of looking at air purification systems for our HVAC system on buses. There are a lot of considerations,” said Jaime Watson, spokeswoman for the Capital District Transportation Authority.
And at the Albany International Airport, spokesman Doug Myers said they are planning to install new MERV-15 filters.
The trouble is, they have been on back order since the start of the pandemic when other building operators around the nation apparently had the same idea.
“As soon as they arrive they are going to be installed,” said Myers.
rkarlin@timesunion.com 518 454 5758 @RickKarlinTU
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