The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved a $1 million knowledge and support technical assistance project to deploy smart, energy efficient, and disease resilient centralized air-conditioning (CAC) systems in its developing member countries (DMCs). This will help to improve energy efficiency and mitigate the risks of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and other airborne viruses in public buildings.

Studies suggest that viruses such as the one causing COVID-19 can survive in the air for several hours, and droplet transmission can be prompted by air-conditioned ventilation while standard CAC systems are not effective in filtering viruses and other pathogens.