Airborne infection risks of SARS-CoV-2 in U.S. schools and impacts of different intervention strategies

Yifang Xu; Jiannan Cai; Shuai Li; Qiang He; Siyao Zhu

doi:10.1016/j.scs.2021.103188

Airborne infection risks of SARS-CoV-2 in U.S. schools and impacts of different intervention strategies

Sustain Cities Soc. 2021 Nov:74:103188. doi: 10.1016/j.scs.2021.103188. Epub 2021 Jul 20.

Authors

Yifang Xu¹, Jiannan Cai², Shuai Li¹, Qiang He¹, Siyao Zhu³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Tennessee, Knoxville. 851 Neyland Drive, Knoxville TN 37996, USA.
² Department of Construction Science, The University of Texas at San Antonio. 501 W César E Chávez Blvd, San Antonio, TX 78207, USA.
³ Department of Civil and Systems Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. 3400 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21218, USA.

Abstract

The potential airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 has triggered concerns as schools continue to reopen and resume in-person instruction during the current COVID-19 pandemic. It is critical to understand the risks of airborne SARS-CoV-2 transmission under different epidemiological scenarios and operation strategies for schools to make informed decisions to mitigate infection risk. Through scenario-based analysis, this study estimates the airborne infection risk of SARS-CoV-2 in 111,485 U.S. public and private schools and evaluates the impacts of different intervention strategies, including increased ventilation, air filtration, and hybrid learning. Schools in more than 90% of counties exhibit infection risk of higher than 1%, indicating the significance of implementing intervention strategies. Among the considered strategies, air filtration is found to be most effective: the school average infection risk when applying MERV 13 is over 30% less than the risk levels correlating with the use of increased ventilation and hybrid learning strategies, respectively. For most schools, it is necessary to adopt combined intervention strategies to ensure the infection risk below 1%. The results provide insights into airborne infection risk in schools under various scenarios and may guide schools and policymakers in developing effective operations strategies to maintain environmental health.

Keywords: Airborne infection risks; COVID-19; Intervention strategies; Policy; Schools.