Seasonal variation in airborne infection risk in schools due to changes in ventilation inferred from monitored carbon dioxide
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Vouriot, Carolanne
Burridge, Henry
Noakes, Catherine
Linden, Paul
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
The year 2020 has seen the world gripped by the effects of the COVID‐19 pandemic. It is not the first time, nor will it be last, that our increasingly globalized world has been significantly affected by the emergence of a new disease. In much of the Northern Hemisphere, the academic year begins in September, and for many countries, September 2020 marked the return to full schooling after some period of enforced closure due to COVID‐19. In this paper, we focus on the airborne spread of disease and investigate the likelihood of transmission in school environments. It is crucial to understand the risk airborne infection from COVID‐19 might pose to pupils, teachers, and their wider social groups. We use monitored CO2 data from 45 classrooms in 11 different schools from within the UK to estimate the likelihood of infection occurring within classrooms regularly attended by the same staff and pupils. We determine estimates of the number of secondary infections arising via the airborne route over pre/asymptomatic periods on a rolling basis. Results show that, assuming relatively quiet desk‐based work, the number of secondary infections is likely to remain reassuringly below unity; however, it can vary widely between classrooms of the same school even when the same ventilation system is present. Crucially, the data highlight significant variation with the seasons with January being nearly twice as risky as July. We show that such seasonal variations in risk due to changes in ventilation rates are robust and our results hold for wide variations in disease parameterizations, suggesting our results may be applied to a number of different airborne diseases.
Date Issued
2021-07
Date Acceptance
2021-02-24
Citation
Indoor Air: international journal of indoor air quality and climate, 2021, 31 (4), pp.1154-1163
ISSN
0905-6947
Publisher
John Wiley and Sons
Start Page
1154
End Page
1163
Journal / Book Title
Indoor Air: international journal of indoor air quality and climate
Volume
31
Issue
4
Copyright Statement
© 2021 The Authors. Indoor Air published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
License URL
Sponsor
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
EPSRC
Identifier
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ina.12818
Grant Number
EP/L016230/1
EP/W001411/1
Subjects
Science & Technology
Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Construction & Building Technology
Engineering, Environmental
Public, Environmental & Occupational Health
Engineering
airborne infection risk
COVID-19
infection modeling
monitored CO2
SARS-CoV-2
school
TRANSMISSION
COVID-19
SARS-CoV-2
airborne infection risk
infection modeling
monitored CO2
school
Algorithms
COVID-19
Carbon Dioxide
Humans
Inhalation Exposure
Risk Assessment
Schools
Seasons
Ventilation
Humans
Carbon Dioxide
Risk Assessment
Ventilation
Seasons
Inhalation Exposure
Algorithms
Schools
COVID-19
Building & Construction
04 Earth Sciences
09 Engineering
11 Medical and Health Sciences
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2021-03-08