NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Delos, a wellness real estate and technology company, has been selected by many of the nation’s largest school districts, including New York City, Chicago, Miami-Dade and Baltimore, to provide its “Delos powered by Healthway” air purification units in response to COVID-19. The company has already provided over 100,000 units to schools across the country, along with evidence-based recommendations on necessary measures for safer school reopening, particularly as it relates to indoor air quality.
Paul Scialla, Delos Founder and CEO and Founder of the International WELL Building Institute, was invited to testify at the Council hearing held by the Committees on Education and Health on the topic of NYC Public School Reopening. Scialla’s testimony underscored the importance of minimizing airborne viral load in the indoor school environment and the role it can play in order to help maintain and support New York City’s ability to safely reopen schools for the 2020-2021 academic year, with the hope of enabling students to continue learning and teachers to continue teaching safely, effectively, and in-person. The City School District of the City of New York is the largest school system in the United States, with over 1.1 million students taught in more than 1,800 separate schools.
The testimony follows the announcement made in August that the New York City Department of Education selected Delos to provide 10,000 air purification units for New York City public schools. Since then, the school system has expanded to 60,000 units across New York City’s five boroughs.
“For more than eight years, Delos has fostered research collaborations with leading medical institutions, including a collaboration with Mayo Clinic on the Well Living Lab, the first human-centered research facility dedicated to researching the indoor environment’s impact on human health,” said Scialla. “We’re pleased to bring this research into practice to help the nation’s public schools keep their students, teachers, staff and the broader community safer.”
As mounting evidence suggests that small aerosolized particles carrying SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) can remain suspended in the air and can persist in aerosol form for long periods of time indoors, air purification systems are considered by many to be a critical supplementary approach to reducing transmission rates by remediating airborne pollutants and contaminants. Delos’ advanced air purification units capture ultrafine particles and can reduce particles that carry airborne bacteria and viruses.
Recognizing the need for research-backed air purification and other solutions across the education sector, Delos also is collaborating with private schools and universities across the globe, including Pontifical Orientale Institute in Rome, Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota, the Masters School in Dobbs Ferry NY, and many others, to integrate air purification and other solutions in response to COVID-19.
“We hope that in conjunction with current COVID-19 mitigation strategies, these solutions will benefit not just the students and staff, but more broadly their families and communities they serve,” said Scialla. “Ultimately, we hope that school systems around the world will follow the model example set by each of these schools, prioritizing cleaner air and healthier learning environments.”
To learn more about Delos’ air purification and other leading solutions, visit delos.com/solutions/schools.
About Delos
Delos is a wellness real estate and technology company guided by the mission to be the world’s leading catalyst for improving the health and well-being of people around the world by improving the indoor environments where they live, work, sleep and play. Informed by more than eight years of research and rigorous analysis of environmental health impacts on people, Delos and its subsidiaries offer an array of evidence-based technology and solutions for residential, commercial and hospitality spaces. Delos is the founder of the WELL Building Standard™, the premier standard for buildings, interior spaces and communities seeking to implement, validate and measure features that support and advance human health and wellness. Its subsidiary, the International WELL Building Institute, administers and continues WELL’s development and drives market adoption. Delos’ advisory board is comprised of leading professionals across real estate, government policy, medicine and sustainability. For more information about Delos, please visit www.delos.com.