This suggests that "the way we design, operate and maintain buildings influences transmission".
While World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines on indoor air quality cover chemicals such as benzene and carbon monoxide, they do not recommend any standards for bacteria or viruses.
The conclusion is that "a paradigm shift" is needed on the scale of the reforms that helped to clean up British cities in the 19th century.
A landmark report on sanitation by Edwin Chadwick in 1842 highlighted the shocking plight of the poorest urban dwellers, many suffering from diseases caused by contaminated water.
It led to a huge programme of investment in networks to supply water and to handle sewage.
An effort on a similarly vast scale is needed now, the experts say, to clean up the air in our buildings, cut the number of pathogens and improve health "just as we expect for the water coming out of our taps".
One of the authors, Prof Cath Noakes, an environmental engineer at the University of Leeds, told me that we take for granted the water and sewage infrastructure that followed the Chadwick report and should think of air in the same way.
"Air quality is invisible to us so we ignore it yet it affects us day in, day out, carrying respiratory diseases which affect the probability of you getting infections," she said.