LIVE | Experts: set up ‘task force ventilation’ to combat corona | Inland

• Whether or not a third jab: has a ‘boostershot‘ sentence?
• Number of new infections remains stable, decrease in new patients in hospitals
• Reproduction number lowest since June 1, 2020
• Vaccinologist optimistic: ‘Possibly no more new large variants’

6.45 – Experts: set up ‘task force ventilation’ to combat corona

The cabinet should set up a ventilation task force that, in addition to the OMT, advises on the correct rules for refreshing indoor air. Several professors are calling for this in Trouw. According to the experts, the current ventilation recommendations do not go far enough. According to them, a letter about this to the Ministry of Health has remained unanswered for the time being.

Earlier this month, the government issued a stricter advice on ventilation. “Provide enough fresh air inside and then you talk about home, work, school, shops and catering,” said outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte in a corona press conference. “And at home that means, for example, make sure that fresh air flows through the house for at least fifteen minutes a day.”

The experts in Trouw do not agree with the latter. Indoor environment professor Philomena Bluyssen of TU Delft calls this advice ‘a joke’ and wonders what Rutte is basing it on. “Fifteen minutes of airing is not enough. Imagine that someone smokes several cigarettes indoors, that air does not disappear after 15 minutes of airing.” Professor of aerodynamics Bert Blocken states that airing 15 minutes an hour would be much more useful.

“I immediately see limitations,” says virologist Louis Kroes about the ventilation advice. “In winter we go indoors more and the options for ventilation are more limited. When it freezes, we still have to close windows and doors.” He does think the advice is a good way to underline the importance of ventilation.

As far as Bluyssen and Blocken are concerned, the current ‘ventilation plan’ will be expanded. More attention should be paid to the proper exchange of air, for example by turning off the air conditioning at home when there are visitors. “Because an air conditioner only cools and reuses existing air,” Bluyssen explains. The professor believes that more attention should also be paid to good ventilation in the catering industry. “In Belgium there is a CO2 meter in every cafe. If it exceeds 900 parts per million, a number of people have to leave the restaurant.”

It recently emerged that the cabinet had decided to relax ventilation rules for the catering industry. With the amendment of the Licensing and Catering Act, the ventilation standard for the catering industry has become five times lower since 1 July. Experts expressed their surprise about this in NRC. The cabinet is now looking at how it can reintroduce the old, stricter ventilation standards for the catering industry.

6.30 – Two more areas in China report Covid outbreaks

China’s worst outbreak of corona infections in months has spread to two other parts of the country, local health authorities reported on Saturday. This concerns 55 new infections in Fujian province and the Chongqing region. Earlier outbreaks of the Delta variant were reported in four other provinces and in the capital Beijing.

The country is not taking half measures to nip the outbreaks in the bud. In Nanjing, where more than 200 infections have been diagnosed since July 20, all tourist attractions and cultural sites will be closed on Saturday. In addition, the city tested all 9.2 million residents twice in the past week.

Hundreds of thousands of people are in lockdown in Jiangsu province. The 1.5 million residents of the tourist city of Zhangjiajie, in Hunan province, have been in lockdown since Friday after it became clear that some infected people had attended a theater performance. In Beijing’s Changping district, where two locally transmitted infections have been identified, 41,000 people went into lockdown on Thursday.

China has registered 92,930 infections and 4,636 deaths since the outbreak of the pandemic. More than 1.6 billion vaccinations have been administered nationwide to date, out of an estimated population of 1.4 billion, according to the National Health Commission. China aims to have 80 percent of the population fully vaccinated by the end of the year.

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