Experts believe that ventilating rooms can help to avoid the coronavirus. Try it, it costs you absolutely nothing!
A growing body of evidence suggests that air circulating indoors contributes to the spread aerosols, that cause infection. A cloud of these fine particles can remain in the air for more than an hour, so it is recommended to ventilate the rooms we are in several times.
Epidemiologist Antoine Flahault compared the whole thing to smoking. "What will you do if the room is full of smoke? Open the window to let the smoke out of the room." he says. "It's the same with this invisible contagious cloud." The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also recently included in its recommendations for combating the spread of the disease COVID-19 ventilation of premises. "Avoid closed spaces and ensure their proper ventilation by bringing in as much fresh air as possible," they wrote on their website.
Although the coronavirus is mainly transmitted by droplets, the CDC has officially included aerosols as a mode of transmission of the virus. Experts in many countries have been calling for tougher measures on aerosols, which were barely mentioned in public health guidelines at the start of the pandemic, for months.
Also Germany is one of the countries that officially recommends the population to open the windows and ventilate the premises. Chancellor Angela Merkel said last month that there would be ventilation "may be one of the cheapest and most effective measures to contain the spread of the pandemic." German doctor Bernhard Junge-Hulsing advises people to keep windows open even when temperatures drop. "You can always wear a sweater if you're cold," he adds.
How much ventilation is needed to "drive away" the aerosols?
"A lot. We recommend complete air circulation in the room at least six times an hour,” says Flahault, director of the Institute for Global Health at the University of Geneva. "It's six times what you have in a TGV (super-fast train) carriage or in an airplane, where the air quality is very good," he adds. "But in most closed spaces we don't have that level of ventilation."
Of course, only open windows are not enough. "Limit the number of people in one room, don't stay in it for too long, wear a mask, wash your hands regularly and try to talk or shout less," points out Flahault.
