Internal ventilation rate should be increased by 50 times … Omicron’s risk of infection remains below 1%
To tie the risk of infection to less than 1% of the Omicron strain of COVID-19, one study found that internal ventilation rates must be increased to 50 times those of the initial virus infection in the spring of 2020. However, it has been shown that if both the infected class and the vulnerable class use quarantine masks (KF94, N95, etc.), it is possible to keep the internal ventilation rate lower than the initial virus period.
This is the result of a mechanical and architectural analysis of the need, such as improving indoor ventilation, to prevent corona infection in an enclosed space by a research team at Tsinghua University in China. . The research team calculated that an individual’s risk of corona infection (alpha, delta and micron mutations) could remain below 1%, especially at what level of internal ventilation. As a result of the study, it was found that, without special measures, the internal ventilation rate should be increased approximately 4 times for the Alpha strain, approximately 20 times for the Delta strain and approximately 50 times for the Omicron strain, respectively.
Professor Bin Zhao of Tsinghua University, the lead author of the study, said: “In real architectural engineering, it is not easy to increase the ventilation speed in this way.” According to the research team, the ventilation rate needed to keep the risk of corona infection below 1% when both infected and vulnerable people wear prevention masks is reduced to about one hundredth of the calculated value. Air purifiers are not effective in reducing infections in the absence of a protective mask. This means that avoiding prolonged exposure without wearing a protective mask in a confined space is still important in reducing the risk of airborne transmission of the coronavirus.
The corona virus mutation has evolved into five types, alpha, beta, gamma, delta, and micron, and infectivity and transmission power have significantly increased compared to the initial virus, while the mortality rate from corona has decreased.
The results of this study (Association between the probability of COVID-19 infection and ventilation rates: an update for SARS-CoV-2 variants) were published in the journal Building Simulation and published on Eureka Alert, a portal managed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science introduced it.
