Kansas schools can fight COVID-19. Do they track ventilation?


Boosting ventilation and filtration in schools are ways that scientists say dramatically cut the risk of inhaling COVID-19.

After the pandemic hit, the largest school district in Kansas set to calculating how much outdoor air it should pull into its buildings.

Wichita Public Schools turned to the nation’s top sources for expertise, then boosted ventilation and filtration in ways that scientists say dramatically cut the risk of inhaling COVID-19.

Evidence that schools — as well as operators of other buildings that bring people together — should take those steps has solidified, buoyed by scientific findings that the virus spreads primarily through particles in the air, not by lurking on doorknobs and table tops.

Yet scientists say most American schools probably don’t bring in enough outdoor air or filter indoor air the way they should. In some schools, the windows don’t even open.

“We are under-ventilating nearly every space we spend time in indoors,” Harvard School of Public Health professor Joseph Allen said in a recent media briefing.



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