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School classrooms are enclosed settings where students and teachers spend prolonged periods of time and therefore risky environments for airborne transmission of SARS-CoV2. While countries worldwide have been pursuing different school reopening strategies, most EU countries are planning to keep schools open during the whole winter season 2020/21. Open schools in winter in highly epidemic areas pose a controversial issue: ventilation of classrooms (an essential mitigation factor for airborne transmission) is expected to sensibly decrease due to outdoor temperatures getting colder and regulators going to allow less restrictive policies on windows closure. Fundamental questions to be addressed are therefore: to which extent can we contain airborne risk in schools with natural ventilation ? what would be the optimal ventilation cycle during the cold season considering the fact that most schools are not provided with mechanical ventilation systems? And, finally, what are the safety ranges to keep the infection risk below the threshold values for new infections within a classroom? To try answering these questions a risk model for airborne transmission of covid-19 in classrooms has been develped based on previous models for tubercolosis and influenza. The separate cases of infectious student and infectious teacher are investigated. The study explored the influence of 3500 different air ventilation cycles on the cumulative airborne risk function throughout a school day. A numerical optimization of the risk function was carried out. Safety risk-zones for breaks and lessons duration were calculated based solely on surgical masks worn by all exposed and optimal windows opening intervals.
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10.1101/2020.12.19.20248493
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Minimizing cumulative risk to control airborne transmission of SARS-Cov-2 in schools
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