Covid is airborne — but preventing airborne spread is perfectly doable. Here’s how to do it (16 January 2022)

Summary

There is no longer any scientific doubt about how Covid spreads through the air. Covid spreads like any other airborne respiratory disease. The virus is carried in tiny particles called aerosols, which we breathe out constantly — especially when speaking loudly or singing. The particles stay in the room air like smoke, and if someone has Covid, their exhaled aerosols contain the virus and can infect someone who breathes them in. We stop the disease spreading by stopping people inhaling infected aerosol.

In this article for the Guardian, Dr Adam Squires and Prof Christina Pagel detail what we can do to protect ourselves from the airborne spread of Covid.

“Filtering facepiece respirator” masks, social distancing and opening windows are short term solutions. Additionally, much can be done by cleaning the air in the room, removing infectious aerosol before it can be inhaled through ventilation and supplement the clean air by filtering out the respiratory aerosol particles using small portable HEPA (“High Efficiency Particle Air”) filter unit..

Longer term, new developments in ultraviolet (UV) technology can safely and efficiently kill airborne pathogens in large spaces such as canteens, gyms or theatre. Infrastructure upgrades and new builds, necessary for zero carbon targets, can combine more energy-efficient ventilation with filtration to lower pollution. In the classroom and the workplace, clean fresh air has wider benefits on health and wellbeing far beyond our current airborne pandemic.