Safe Indoor Air and Vaccines Plus

Safe Indoor Air is key to reducing harm not only from SARS-Cov2 but many airborne diseases, with short term, urgent need for schools and businesses, as well as longer term urban design issues that need to be addressed for life in a post-COVID world.

In the short term, a layered approach to protection can provide a pathway for businesses, the arts and other sectors to open – vaccine compliance, safe indoor air, and masks are part of this. Fortunately, Australia has leading world experts on ventilation and shared air, who are part of OzSAGE. There is a substantial body of scientific evidence on Safe Indoor Air and the risk of airborne infections, generated by engineering, science and medical researchers, but much of it is new to medical experts.

Vaccine-Plus: Vaccines, masks, testing and other non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) as required.

The absolutes are vaccines, and testing with NPIs scalable and flexible for different scenarios and at different times, depending on the epidemiology of COVID-19 at the time. As high efficacy schedules and matched vaccines become available, masks may not be needed long-term, but will be needed in the medium term with current vaccines.

NPIs include avoiding crowded areas when possible, improving indoor air quality, masks, blended learning and working (online and face to face mix) any other measures that reduce contact between people that are infected.