When will our children get HEPA filters in their classrooms? I am so tired of my children constantly being ill and missing school!

[Annemcc32]

I can't believe we are still waiting for HEPA filters in classrooms, they were talking about this in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and STILL they have done nothing! What exactly are they waiting for at this point? There's tons of evidence that they work to remove viruses from the air.
My kids have had Covid 4 times so far and were both very ill. How can they defend doing nothing to prevent staff and children? They have a duty of care to provide a safe environment.
The MOST annoying thing is that clean air IS provided in the Houses of Parliament, many private schools and even the DfE!!
Other countries have already done this now and it reduces transmission of airborne viruses to offer a layer of protection and reduce illness/absence.
I noticed that one council has committed to it just recently (Herefordshire I think). Why is this not being sorted out ASAP before the kids go back in September?
Why are we so bad at protecting our kids?
Not to mention that IF bird flu takes off (no pun intended) this would help. Where did public health go? The UKHSA seem to have taken a sabbatical for the last four years.

Cough and sneeze into your arm and you reduce the air borne particles you spread. It’s that simple but costs nothing. Open the window and that helps disperse the viruses again it’s easy and doesn’t cost. Soap and water do cost but less than your shiny air filter you want in your kids classroom. Tell me when your kids leave the classroom how is their air filtered? That’s right it isn’t but the idiots who cough and sneeze out go unchallenged. Have a think about that. As I said start with the easy solutions I’ve listed.

This is just not a solution. Not sure how else to phrase that 🤷🏻‍♀️ If someone is breathing, they are exhaling virus particles. They don’t need to sneeze or cough.
Also, hand washing makes zero difference to airborne transmission.
So….yeah. Your suggestions are well intentioned, but useless.

And what about breathing, speaking, singing? Should we do all of that into our elbow too?! It's well documented how it spreads through the air and it's not just from coughing/sneezing!

Hand washing helps because basic soap destroys the covid virus … cough on hand.. hand goes onto common surface .. next people touch the surface and then touch their face, mouth, nose, eyes and get infected. The cycle repeats. Instead wash hands with soap and water and bingo there’s no Covid virus. Coughing and sneezing into the arm helps reduce the spread of airborne particles. An open window helps with air flow. Simple actions do actually help. If they had a cost they would be thought worth considering.

An open window or a fitted mask.

I was home educated and got ill a lot in my teens. Nothing major, just caught every bug going. I'd grown out of it by the time I went to uni, and I'm rarely ill now.

I've sometimes wondered whether all the teen illness was caused by a bit less exposure to germs when I was little, so I was sort of catching up in my teens!

I agree re mental health in the older children.

However, the illness in the younger is without a doubt off the scale. Particularly those who had small children due to start nursery as the pandemic hit. They missed all normal exposure. So what then happened when they mixed? Unless you have small children at that point you cannot completely understand how badly that gap in immunity exposure has hit them.

We went through a period, possibly still ongoing where there was NO such thing as just a cold. Having worked in childcare for years before my own, a cold was a cold. Now it's more likely croup, constantly, whooping cough, chest infection.

The older kids had experience of normal exposure, the little ones lived in a bubble and then when the bugs started resurfacing they get absolutely battered.

Mine are vaccinated, good diet, on a farm, outside all day, take vitamins, yet every single week at nursery or school they get something. Never at home. Despite questionable bug eating.

As an aside it would be an interesting study because what I've seen and experienced

Older children, bugs, ok. Mental health, not ok.

Older sibling, bugs, better immunity. Better immunity for little ones.

First child toddler age as pandemic hit, nightmare. Future babies, nightmare b

This has been debunked.
It has been shown, by many studies now, that Covid dysregulates the immune system. This has led to ppl, inc and especially young children, being more susceptible to other viruses and infections.

Definitely! Us staff end up penalised for infections we’ve caught at work despite precautions, we were pretty much all wiped out by norovirus a few months ago which caused mayhem with staffing

The Bradford schools study:
Placing HEPA air filters into classrooms in the Bradford area of the UK reduced the number of covid-19-related absences among students by more than 20%
https://www.leeds.ac.uk/news-health/news/article/4953/can-air-cleaners-reduce-covid-19-in-schools
https://corsirosenthalfoundation.org.uk/articles/class-act/
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2398713-schools-cut-covid-19-sick-days-by-20-per-cent-using-hepa-air-filters/

Also a project called SAMHE The School's Air Quality Monitoring For Health and Education gathered a lot of data from thousands of schools during the original funded period (April 2022 - July 2024)

https://www.york.ac.uk/yesi/research/environment-health/samhe/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/av/65818540
https://samhe.org.uk/

@Annemcc32 what has been debunked? My opinion?

Or do you mean it's not the isolation but the covid that's caused the weakness in immunity in the small kids?

Apologies, yes the immunity debt theory. Which is what your opinion is known as.
It has been repeatedly shown that Covid affects the immune system, for many months after even mild infections. Leaving is all more likely to be ill with lots of other things!

Absolutely agree to open windows and mask wearing but try suggesting people wear masks and see the backlash you get!
But hand washing is pretty pointless there's very little infection from surface contact as its predominantly airborne and not droplets.

Yep

It's like watching the townsfolk mock Noah. Arguing is a waste of time. All anyone needs to know, is what people with power and money and all the information about the disease and its outcomes are doing. HEPA, far UV and strategic masking, that's what. Save your children, and save yourselves, because the WHO, the goverment, the NHS, and the educational establishment have zero interest in doing so.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’

Skibidi bibidi boo

I want my children to grow up happy and healthy. I work in healthcare and I am seriously concerned with what I’ve seen from repeat Covid infections. If people really knew I don’t think they would be as keen to send their children to school to be repeatedly infected.

OK, so, say we installed HEPA filters in evert classroom.
My understanding is we now need to shut all the windows, as you can't filter the whole world.
So, you have 30 kids, a teachers and (hopefully) a TA sat in a room with all the doors and windows shut.
The CO2 goes up massively, and this last week you are all baking.

How do you balance the need for ventilation and potentially cooling vs the filtering?

None of these things will prevent an airborne virus from infecting people who are sharing air. Just breathing out releases viral particles. This should have been made extremely clear by health authorities from day one, instead we have people saying stuff like this and thinking washing your hands is enough to avoid infection, because of the government messaging about hand washing. Having clean hands is great, but Covid is airborne. Cleaning the air and ensuring ventilation will reduce the risk of infection, sneezing into your elbow definitely won't.

Nope.
The optimal is filters PLUS ventilation.
So keep windows open 👍

Because she's not a loon.

Viruses are part of life and it's good to get them young as they offer life long protection.

Teachers may value this for children and may have much more significant priorities.

Such as not being hit by a flying chair from a kid with unmet needs.

Agreed, the filters can remove virus, allergens and pollution. Having windows open at the same time allows oxygen into the room to keep everyone’s brains going - better test results and less headaches. It’s a win win.

How much are they? Can you fund raise to get them in your school? Might be the only way and worth it? See if the other class parents will contribute?