Covid-19 is an airborne respiratory disease that poses a serious threat to the health and lives of children and staff in schools, childcare centres and the wider community. Children as young as 13 months old have died from Covid in Australia. Ventilation, along with vaccination and other vital covid-safe steps, are essential to keep children safe. OzSAGE, a multi-disciplinary network of Australian experts, believes ventilation, monitored in terms of CO2 concentration as its proxy and HEPA filtration, are key requirements for the safe operation of schools. Their stance is supported by both the CDC in the USA and the ECDC across Europe.

Students will also not be fully vaccinated by the start of the school year for 2022. As of 6th January, only 62% of 12-15 year olds have received their second dose of the covid-19 vaccine, according to the Department of Health, and the 5-11 age group will have only had the possibility of 1 vaccine dose. Even with entire school populations vaccinated, the virus can still spread and so a range of mitigation measures must be implemented to protect students and staff. 

At the end of 2021, Queensland Education Minister Grace Grace told the ABC she did not believe that there was “a big ventilation problem" in Queensland schools. To date, however, there has not been any audit of Queensland education facilities for ventilation, no on-going monitoring of healthy ventilation levels in full classrooms and staff spaces, and preparations for ensuring safety of students and staff in the midst of significant community transmission of Covid-19 are woefully inadequate. Surgical masks and open windows are not sufficient. There have already been significant outbreaks in Queensland schools in 2021 demonstrating the ability of Covid-19 to spread in active classroom settings. This should be reduced as much as possible, and where not possible, alternative education settings need to be implemented as an urgent priority.

We demand the following:

1. Provision all schools and early childhood education centres with N95 masks for staff and school-aged children to wear at all times;

2. Conduct thorough ventilation audits throughout Queensland schools to assess safe ventilation levels in all spaces and identify areas that need portable air purifiers, such as HEPA filters;

3. Equip interiors that do not have natural (windows) or mechanical ventilation in portable air purifiers. these devices have been shown to efficiently control concentrations of airborne particles (including virus-laden particles) in indoor spaces;

4. Provision all schools and early childhood education centres with CO2 monitors to maintain regular monitoring of proper ventilation in all spaces, for students and for staff, and the establishing of evacuation procedures for classrooms that are not kept below 700 ppm CO2

5. Remove the limit on allocation of Special Pandemic Leave (currently capped at 20 days) for public service employees to ensure that all school staff, permanent and casual, are able to isolate if sick, if waiting for PCR results, to care for sick children or if schools/childcare centres close, and other pandemic-related reasons;

6. Mandate strict cohorting with staggered entrance, breaks and departure times for different year levels to reduce possible transmission

7. If spread occurs in schools, school closures and remote learning need to be implemented rapidly to ensure further spread is contained.

Petition drafted in collaboration with and supported by air quality expert QUT Distinguished Professor Lidia Morawska, member of OzSAGE.