The Covid wave in England is likely continuing to grow, and infection levels as of 27 September were probably between 1 in 249 and 1 in 218 people infected. This is the time to take sensible precautions against catching Covid in all indoor places.
This is a brief update based on estimated growth of Covid in England. The NHS data on which we rely has been significantly delayed, so we cannot give you a more precise figure. However, the trend over the last few weeks is clear: the risk of meeting a Covid-infected person in your everyday life is still rising, and the overall Risk now is almost certainly High.
Managing Your Risk
Covid is an airborne virus. This means that it mainly spreads in the air that you breathe.
Things you can do to protect yourself against Covid infection include:
- Wearing a PPE respiratory mask indoors. Worn correctly, respiratory masks (rated FFP2/FFP3 or N95/99) filter airborne viruses out of the air that you breathe.
- Improving fresh air ventilation. Fresh air, especially moving fresh air, very effectively dilutes and breaks up the clouds of Covid virus in the air, making it less likely that you will inhale enough virus to catch Covid. A CO2 monitor will help you understand how fresh or recirculated indoor air is – the lower the CO2, the better.
- Using a HEPA filter. HEPA filters suck in the air, filter out viruses like Covid (and other particles), and blow out clean air. HEPA filters are very useful in cleaning the air in rooms with poor fresh air ventilation.
- Avoiding higher-risk areas. If you don’t go to areas where there is likely to be a lot of virus, you won’t catch it.
- Enjoy the outdoors. It is extremely difficult to catch Covid outside, because the fresh moving air immediately disrupts and dilutes the Covid virus which other people may breathe out. As long as you are not in a dense crowd of people who are breathing directly into your face, you do not need to take precautions against catching Covid outdoors.
More Information
For more Covid information and help, or if you’d like to know more about how we calculate risk, please contact BuDS and we will be happy to help.