Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the emergence of yet another SARS-CoV-2 variant has brought home the fact that the virus is here to stay. That means the world will need to find long-term strategies to coexist with Delta, Omicron and other SARS-CoV-2 variants to come.
As governments reopen at varying paces, there are things that individuals and companies can do to navigate a careful return to some kind of normalcy. Simple but permanent changes in how people live and work can limit the risks.
“So far, the governments have been responsible for people’s behavior, but I don’t think they will intervene so much anymore, and it’s becoming individual choice,” University of Hong Kong epidemiology professor Benjamin Cowling said.
Illustration: Mountain People
The potential for Omicron to evade vaccines, while still unknown, underscores the danger of just relying on inoculation to return safely to normal living. While elimination of the virus is an impossibility in most of the world at this point, adjustments in individual habits and communal spaces can help slow the pace of outbreaks and keep high-risk groups safer.
Here are some ideas, distilled from health experts and practices observed in different parts of the world.
A new focus on air quality
Very fine droplets and particles carrying the virus continue to spread through the air in enclosed spaces and can accumulate, which means that offices, restaurants, schools, buses and trains need to be made safer.
In buildings where air is recirculated, the air should go through filters that remove particles and possibly viruses, said Lidia Morawska, director of the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health at the Queensland University of Technology.
The transmission risk can be higher at restaurants that just have standard air-conditioning without ventilation and patrons have their masks off when eating, she said, recommending a carbon-dioxide monitor on the wall of every public space.
Easy measures include installing the carbon-dioxide monitors to identify poorly ventilated areas, opening windows and doors, and turning on fans to remove virus-laden droplets from indoor air. The harder part is setting national standards and requiring every building to have a proper ventilation system to meet those benchmarks.
Morawska points to Germany, which started working on addressing the air quality risk early on — the German government in October last year said that it would invest 500 million euros (US$565 million) to improve ventilation systems in public buildings, such as offices, museums, theaters and schools.
HEPA filters and other air cleaning tools are used by health-conscious households in Asian cities that face chronic or recurrent pollution; COVID-19 simply adds urgency to addressing the issue of air quality.
Normalize cheap, fast testing
Rapid home tests for COVID-19 are crucial for resuming normal social and economic activities, but the cost varies from country to country. In the US, a two-pack starts at US$14, if they can be found, while tests are provided free in the UK.
“The biggest problem of COVID-19 is the airborne transmission from asymptomatic people,” said Kenji Shibuya, an epidemiologist and the research director of the Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research. “A negative test result gives you scientific proof that you are not infectious so that you can continue with your life.”
The British National Health Service recommends that people do a rapid test twice per week and self-isolate if the virus is detected, launching a campaign earlier this year to provide free rapid tests.
Germany has brought back free rapid tests for all at sites sprinkled across cities. The kits can be bought for about 2 euros.
Singapore’s vaccinate-or-regularly-test regime is a well-thought-out program, Shibuya said.
The city-state has sent out millions of free rapid antigen test kits to households, and from next year will require medically eligible employees either to be vaccinated or to undergo testing at their own cost to enter the workplace. Elementary-school students have been told to take a rapid antigen test once every two weeks.
Masks are necessary
People should get used to wearing a mask indoors, and even outdoors in crowded settings. This might mean masks on in winter, and on public transportation and planes.
Donning a mask more than halves the risk of getting COVID-19, a review of eight studies published in the British Medical Journal said.
Anyone aged two or older who is not fully inoculated should wear a mask in indoor public places, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says.
Those who cannot avoid crowded or indoor settings should wear a mask and open windows, to increase ventilation, the WHO says.
For those concerned about the environmental effects of billions of masks being used and discarded, there are choices. Brands worldwide are making efforts to craft reusable masks using cotton, hemp and other sustainable materials.
Less crowded offices, commutes
Allowing flexibility to work from home is not just about keeping employees mentally happy, but also helps to limit the health risk. As people adopt hybrid work models, the reduction in the number of people traveling on trains and buses during rush hour would reduce crowding across the day.
The risk of airborne transmission could be cut fourfold by halving the occupancy of an office, modeling by scientists, including Paul Linden at the University of Cambridge, showed.
Most workers in well-ventilated, quiet offices are unlikely to infect each other via airborne particles, but the risk becomes greater if the space is poorly ventilated or if the workers are involved in activities that require more speaking, said the study, which was published in the journal Indoor and Built Environment.
Once in the office or school, measures such as spacing desks farther apart, reducing the occupancy of meeting rooms and wearing masks when speaking will help, experts have said.
On trains and buses, passengers should be masked and discouraged from speaking — a measure taken by Singapore since the start of the pandemic and already a cultural norm during flu or pollen season in pre-pandemic Japan.
Germaphobia is okay
It might seem obvious, but frequent handwashing is still one of the best ways to protect people from getting sick, says the CDC, with its well-publicized guidance to scrub with soap for at least 20 seconds, especially after being in a public place, or after coughing or sneezing.
If soap and water are not available, hand sanitizers with at least 60 percent alcohol content can help, the CDC says, adding that the difference is that hand washing removes all types of germs, while sanitizers act by killing only certain germs on the skin.
Hand sanitizer dispensers are ubiquitous in schools, office buildings, malls, museums and restaurants in cities such as Singapore and Tokyo, a practice that can be made permanent now that it has taken hold.
Some offices also provide a plentiful amount of disinfecting wipes for employees, wax paper for water dispenser handles and antibacterial coatings for door handles.
For communal dining experiences, such as buffets, installing handwashing stations at the entrance is a trick already employed in some places.
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