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.

When H5N1 finally makes the jump we’re probably going to wish we’d done this.

It eliminates the virus going onto common surfaces. Viral particles can infect people who touch common surfaces- fact.

Yes - which is why ventilation through open windows helps reduce viral load.

I am well aware of the science on this topic. I’m still interested to know your information on the countries that have a hepa filter in every classroom?

Having less kids in a classroom would be far more effective, and windows that actually open instead of having bars on them ( I kid you not).
Kids are constantly swigging from other kids water bottles, whispering in ears, older kids are holding hands, snogging and worse. It's not like an adult environment at all. Everything will spread in these conditions, reducing the impact of filters.

I would much rather see filters in hospitals and hospices first.

I've worked in schools where the kids complain there is never enough handsoap or even toilet roll. Teachers buy tissues for their classroom and hand sanitiser but the small costs add up. Schools desperately need funding for these basics which in a big school can add up to thousands a year.

I wonder if the OP works for a filter company and is drumming up trade?

You make a claim but can’t prove your point… why is that? I suggest you follow your own advice to carry on with your ignorance. Good luck with your next bout of covid or flu or a cold have a think about basic hygiene at that moment and perhaps you’ll wish that others bothered enough to not cough and sneeze out in enclosed spaces and put their infected hands on common surfaces.

Yawn

Very true but that doesn't mean children shouldn't have clean air. They have HEPA filters in the HoC for that very reason. Also, HEPA filters can be built quite cheaply too as science projects.

Long Covid is life changing.

it is boring that you make a claim but have no information other than your own imagination to back it up.

Why not built HEPA filters in science as a project?

And no, fewer children are not more effective than a HEPA filter.

OP you are coming across as absolutely unhinged.

So have you got HEPA filters in your home or not?

Because THERE is NO money for the materials. I think you might have quite a privileged background. There are lots of things like filters that would make life better and more healthy but it just ain't going to happen. I'm sorry for all the people on the thread with COVID complications and I can understand that this would make you health cautious. We all have our personal experiences that cloud our opinions. Personally I would like to see smaller class sizes over all other improvements to education. That ain't happening either, but we can both dream.

Cleaning the Air works.
Mask-wearing works

Quite a few state schools have done this, often with support from donations from local businesses. So, no privilege, just a bit of effort and not that expensive at all. Just parents that push and understand the science and don't want their children's health ruined.

OP, not rtft. Apologies, don't have capacity. I also can't see poll - maybe it doesn't show on phone app?
Anyway, of course schools should have HEPA by now. Teacher absence is also up. There's a high cost to all this illness and it obviously factors into attendance too. It shouldn't be a fight between pencils, schools falling down or kids, teachers and their families having zero measures to reduce the risk of covid. How are we meant to pay for the increased cost of support for e.g. those who develop mental health issues due to covid-induced brain changes if we can't afford a HEPA?

Things like increased risk of diabetes are also not included in the long covid for kids numbers.

There are lots of studies showing how HEPAs help attendance, test scores, illness levels - it's a rational response.
Ministry of Defence have also addressed their indoor air for all buildings in the wake of covid - why wouldn't they?

People speaking the truth in a time of lies generally sound mad to the majority. In fact insanity is usually the first charge levelled at them, as a way to discredit their arguments. It's called ad hominem, and it's a logical fallacy. She's actually hyper-sane, whereas those arguing against clean indoor air sound like the people arguing against sanitising water after the cholera epidemics, or like the doctors in the time of Semmelweiss, arguing against handwashing before delivering babies and performing surgery, after mass post-partum deaths in hospitals. To look at it another way, they also sound like the women trying to stop the Suffragettes from fighting for our rights over, among other things, our own children. A new world is struggling to be born, and it will include clean indoor air, and an enormous number of very, very angry young people.

If you're going to put hepa filters in every classroom then you need to extend their installation to every canteen, corridor, assembly hall and sports hall. Kids will still get ill from a friend's sleepover or the Reading festival (which got lots of our sixth formers). More economical to vaccinate and practice good hygiene.

That's right, you've got the idea. HEPA needs to be everywhere. In every room, in every building, as standard, to weaken the chains of transmission of every virus, to reduce bacterial infection and allergic reactions to pollen and other allergens, and to minimise exposure to air pollution from traffic and industry.

Yes, that would make sense. It's like having sex with lots of different partners and only sometimes using a condom or driving in a car and only sometimes wearing a seatbelt. The risk of catching covid is high at school, just because this risk it exists elsewhere too, is no reason not to mitigate where it is possible and quite easily done. Yes, also in canteens and halls. I don't understand why folks don't want to mitigate where they can. OP is well informed and clearly follows the science.

No, they don't come across as absolutely unhinged at all. We are in another Covid wave and just watching the Olympics shows us how wild things are. Ad hominem attacks aren't a good look.

It's not a matter of thinking blood tests will one day be able to prove a person has long covid - they already can.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/252415/long-covid-leaves-telltale-traces-blood/#:~:text=People%20with%20long%20COVID%20have,be%20targeted%20with%20immune%20therapies.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-024-01778-0

As they now can also with covid vaccine injury.

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/12/7/790?fbclid=IwY2xjawEViD9leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHcDPqZHEsaP3jgNhPIGjLn9O-j4WajaQyj9n12Uw5dMryXaV8wqE-oWVbQ_aem_0kVjvGrbruLKjszZZhk0YQ

An article today regarding the research on the effects of Covid infection on the brain:
https://www.chron.com/news/article/mounting-research-shows-that-covid-19-leaves-its-19616337.php

Thank you for posting this. It’s an absolute shocker and to everyone saying & thinking we can’t afford to, we absolutely can! We can’t afford not to. Sickness costs in both the short and the long term.

We started to home educate because of the refusal to mitigate & deliberate infection policy.

The herd immunity unicorn is not going to arrive, despite the government doing their very best at infecting our kids, they need to start doing something public health education.

It’s also clear that the effects of covid are cumulative, that long covid is an ongoing lottery and that it’s not going away by itself.

All of this. The previous posters idea that you can educate in any environment, ignoring all health and safety is just 🤯

Australia and parts of America have interested. Several countries are measuring CO2 levels in classrooms. The U.K. are doing nothing.

My husband is assistant head at a primary, we’ve started a fund raiser ourselves to get air filters in school. This will protect 700+ kids in London.