Schools Ventilation Progress

Better ventilating schools for long-term student and teacher health is the engineering push, but we need to track the progress for that in each country. We should do so ahead of government efforts. If the government starts to track this work, this effort will continue as government efforts might be weak. The published Science.org article highlights schools as a key place for active ventilation work. This should involve mechanical heat recovery ventilation (MHRV), air filtration/cleaning, and CO2 monitoring to drive ventilation levels, as CO2 inside is a proxy indicator for COVID-19 transmission risk. The WHO document details all of these measures too.

When we say student and teacher health, we aim to reduce absences by lowering transmission in schools. We also reduce multi-generation transmission outside schools as kids were bringing COVID-19 home and infecting their parents and grandparents. With lowered transmission, we also reduce the incidence of long COVID, where the worst sufferers have disappeared from education and may be unable to earn a living for the rest of their lives.