QUT air-quality expert Distinguished Professor Lidia Morawska, Director of the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health (ILAQH) is leading an international call for a “paradigm shift” in combating airborne pathogens such as COVID-19, demanding universal recognition that infections can be prevented by improving indoor ventilation systems. D/Professor Morawska led a group of almost 40 researchers from 14 countries in a call published in Science for a shift in standards in ventilation requirements equal in scale to the transformation in the 1800s when cities started organising clean water supplies and centralised sewage systems. The international group of air quality researchers called on the World Health Organisation to extend the indoor air quality guidelines to include airborne pathogens and to recognise the need to control hazards of airborne transmission of respiratory infections.