Good air circulation reduces the risk of COVID-19 infection in the classroom by 80%

Reuters news agency (UK) reported that the David Hume Institute in Scotland supervised an experiment comparing the spread of COVID-19 in 10,441 classrooms in the Marche region (Italy). The experiment was conducted from September 2021 to January 2022.

The results showed that COVID-19 infection was quite low in 316 classrooms equipped with mechanical ventilation systems. In places where the better ventilation is, the lower the number of COVID-19 cases.

With devices that ensure the air in the classroom is replaced 2.4 times per hour, the infection rate of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is reduced by up to 40%. In the case that the air is changed 4 times per hour, the infection rate is reduced to 66.8% and 6 times per hour will decrease to 82.5%.

The Marche regional government said that if the most efficient ventilation systems were installed in classrooms, the 250 cases per 100,000 pupils (the education ministry’s warning level) would fall to 50 cases per 100,000 students. .

Most schools in Italy lack mechanical ventilation systems. Instead, teachers encourage students to open classroom windows in favorable weather conditions.

Italy recorded a rapid increase in new COVID-19 cases between December 2021 and early January 2022. Then, from mid-January to a few weeks ago, the number of new COVID-19 cases had been on a downward trend in Italy. But recently, the number of new cases has increased, stemming from the sub-variant of Omicron. However, hospitalization and mortality rates have been on the decline.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in February 2020, Italy has recorded 157,904 deaths from this disease, the second highest in Europe, after the UK, and eighth in the world. According to worldometers, as of the morning of March 23, the total number of COVID-19 cases in Italy was 13.99 million.