OzSAGE, a multi-disciplinary network of experts, has released a preliminary advice paper with recommendations on how Australia can safely reopen in the COVID-10 pandemic.
QUT’s Distinguished Professor Lidia Morawska, an international air quality expert, is part of the executive of the national group inspired by UK Independent SAGE (Independent Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies).
Professor Morawska has been leading the international call for a “paradigm shift” in combating airborne pathogens such as COVID-19 through improving indoor ventilation systems.
“Most infections occur in shared indoor spaces,” Professor Morawska said.
“The most fundamental measure to eliminate the virus from indoor air is ventilation: every public building must have control measures to provide adequate ventilation.”
To highlight the message, Professor Morawska has worked with OzSAGE members including Professor Raina MacIntyre, professor of global biosecurity at UNSW’s Kirby Institute, to produce a video on the need for a ventilation revolution.
“Vaccines matched to Delta and other variables will become available, and boosters are on the horizon. This changes the game in favour of herd immunity,” Professor MacIntyre said.
“But there needs to be a multi-pronged approached with ventilation. In an indoor space where the ventilation isn’t adequate, somebody with the infection could have come and gone, but the virus is still lingering in the air.”
The OzSAGE list of initial recommendations are:
- Live with occasional outbreaks – not widespread disease: COVID-19 is here to stay, but we may not need to live with widespread disease or lose all the gains won in 2020. We may feasibly achieve control of COVID-19 in the same way we have with measles, a more contagious virus. For now, that requires Ventilation and Vaccines-Plus to manage outbreaks. The vaccine pipeline is not static. When boosters or vaccines matched to variants are available, herd immunity should be possible by using a smart and agile vaccine strategy.
