Some Canberra parents are calling for schools to improve ventilation and other infection control measures as cases of COVID and other respiratory illnesses continue to climb.
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COVID-19 infections have tripled over the past month and, alongside respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and influenza, has been circulating in schools, but it is up to individual schools as to what measures they take to prevent illnesses spreading.
On Tuesday Canberra hospitals switched to an amber alert level, meaning masks must be worn again in all public areas in hospitals and health clinics and patients can only have two visitors at a time.
Many classes have been split up or put into study halls as Canberra schools struggle with staff absences caused by illness and an underlying shortage of teachers.
Canberra parent Natalia Bateman said 13 staff were off sick at her child's high school recently. She felt her concerns about poor ventilation in classrooms had not been taken seriously.
"They always dismiss our concerns, they don't listen to us," Ms Bateman said.
"People really want to put it under the rug."
Natalie McBurney has been trying to avoid infection because of an underlying health condition but recently more of her friends have been getting sick with COVID.
"Everybody's at risk, but I already was before [the pandemic] started and that didn't change," Ms McBurney said.
"So I've been consistently trying to avoid COVID throughout, and my daughter at school as well, because the last thing she wants to do is contract it and then pass it on to me, because I wouldn't do so well with it."
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An Education Directorate spokesman said schools were operating on the lowest setting of their COVID-19 education management strategy, where schools are able to decide for themselves what approach is taken.
"The COVID-19 Education Management Strategy 2022-24 guides individual schools on various control measures for maintaining infection control, including cleaning, case monitoring, mask use, hygiene, ventilation adjustments and introduction of outside air," he said.
"It should also be noted that ensuring indoor air quality is not the only way that ACT public schools seek to prevent illnesses from spreading between staff and students.
"Both schools and the Directorate have continued regularly communicating with families on the importance of vaccination against illnesses, as well as keeping students home from school if unwell."
Poor ventilation increases risk
The directorate's tier one guidelines for managing COVID-19 in schools state that "poorly ventilated indoor settings increase the risk of transmission of COVID-19 infection."
"If a space is poorly ventilated, the number of infectious aerosols increases and may remain suspended in the air for some time and the risk of COVID-19 transmission increases," the guidelines say.
"Good ventilation helps to minimise the build-up of infectious aerosols."
Most ACT public schools have a combination of mechanical and natural ventilation. Only 16 ACT public schools are fully equipped with mechanical ventilation, which means there are systems built into the campus to regulate the flow of fresh air into the rooms.
Eighty public schools rely on natural ventilation, which means the windows and doors need to be opened regularly in order to get fresh air into the classrooms
The Education Directorate purchased more than 1000 carbon dioxide monitors for public schools during the public health emergency phase of the pandemic to help schools improve ventilation. However, The Canberra Times understands many of these sensors are no longer in use.
The directorate spokesman said winter indoor air quality maps for every school were reviewed earlier this year and some schools were using carbon dioxide sensors.
An ACT Health spokesperson said there was currently no nationally agreed method for monitoring carbon dioxide of indoor air and CO2 monitors were used to assess the general ventilation of a room.
The spokesperson said the ACT Health Directorate did not provide advice on whether air purifiers could be used to improve air quality to prevent illness, nor did they generally give advice on ventilation for public buildings.
Stopping the spread
Professor Sanjaya Senanayake said there was no evidence that getting COVID more than once was going to lead to longer term, serious adverse health outcomes, however people should still avoid contracting viruses.
"Being healthy is much better than being sick... The consequences are that it has implications for your work, you can infect those around you. And though you may not have these long-term effects, it can take a while to recover and throw it off."
Professor Senanayake said COVID didn't tend to be a severe disease in healthy children but some precautions could be taken to reduce the risk of transmission in school settings.
"I think in general, the principle of making sure that there's good ventilation in the school setting is a good idea," Professor Senanayake said.
"But of course with COVID we can make sure that at-risk people are vaccinated, that at-risk people who get COVID get their antivirals on time. Teachers, kids who go to school, shouldn't go to school if they're sick.
"So all those measures can help in reducing COVID in our community and in our schools. And of course, when I talked about vaccination, we're not normally vaccinating healthy kids for COVID."
Science communicator Colin Kinner created a COVID safety for schools online course featuring interviews with dozens of experts that launched in February.
"The very strong message that I'm getting is that schools are firstly, largely oblivious so they generally don't understand that it's even a thing they should be thinking about," Mr Kinner said.
"And secondly, the ones that have had ventilation assessments done or that have had improvements made the ventilation or had been given CO2 monitors, they've largely stopped doing those things."
He said schools could open windows and doors for a short time between classes in the winter months to improve air circulation.