Our Nature Perspectives paper on how Independent SAGE communicated with the public and vice versa. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Narrator: She made this up.

"The Occupational Impact of COVID-19 in the Transport and Education Sectors" just published by the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council (IIAC) as a "Command Paper" by the Secretary of State for Work & Pensions. A brief summary & some comments follow... www.gov.uk/government/p...

A tale of two platforms: BlueSky user numbers have hit a new record high in recent days, while the number of people deleting their accounts on X/Twitter has rocketed 🚀

Pleased to have the clinical outcome from AAirDS in print at last; a mere 18 months after study closure 🥴. I know the headline figure to some may be disappointing but lots to draw out that's encouraging. Watch this space! doi.org/10.1016/j.jh...

For those at the CIBSE Build2Perform Live event today here is an excellent thread summing up some of the findings from AAirDS.

Can air purifier (HEPA) units prevent spread of SARS-CoV-2 in hospitals? Important new data from the AAirDS study led by Victoria Keevil in @thejhi.bsky.social TL:DR Probably – but implementation is key. A short 🧵 doi.org/10.1016/j.jh...

A little bit of background We know that SARS-CoV-2 spreads in hospitals, and in other enclosed spaces. We know you can find SARS-CoV-2 in the air and that airborne transmission occurs. t.co/E5BO0h4q7s

Previous work in Addenbrooke's demonstrated that we could detect SARS-CoV-2 in the air of COVID wards (but not COVID ICU!) and that HEPA filters removed it very effectively The key question, would this translate into reduced in-hospital transmission? t.co/CuPc8AE1bq

So we set up the AAirDS study, deploying HEPA-based air cleaning units in two wards whilst not deploying them in matched wards – excluding periods when these wards were used as COVID-19 cohort wards themselves. Using routine healthcare data we then observed rates of COVID-19.

Overall COVID-19 was ‘lumpy’, and rates of in-hospital transmission were lower than expected but increased over time. Whilst the air cleaning intervention didn’t abolish transmission it was reduced by 22%

The hazard ratio for nosocomial transmission was 0.9 (95% 0.53-1.52) – so reduced, but we cannot be certain about this as the confidence interval crosses 1 (so true effect may be reduced transmission, no effect or even increased transmission)

In the second ward pair we saw a much smaller difference, but this was also as other restrictions were being lifted and compliance with the HEPA filters dropped as they were increasingly turned off.

Why did people turn them off? Multiple reasons, including not seeing these devices as important for infection prevention and control, being moderately noisy and perception of drafts. Whatever the reasons, inoperative devices won't have an effect. t.co/VCn7VVn285

Given our previous findings of a wide range of other organisms in the air of hospitals, we also looked to see if other nosocomial infections (yellow bars in the figures above) were reduced – overall rates of these were too low to see any difference.

So what can we conclude. 1) The effect seen was consistent with previous data 2) If HEPA filters are effective they are far from a panacea 3) prevention of nosocomial viral infections will need a multi-modal approach.

Good question. We didn’t specifically ask this, but these devices produce a low rumble which is mildly disruptive to conversation- but not a highly irritating high pitched whine.

On the noise aspects did you get any comments on the “quality” of the sound. Some noise is more annoying than others even though the dB can be the same.

This is likely to be something to do with the outcomes we recently reported. The HEPA filter intervention had a modest association with reduction in nosocomial COVID acquisition. Adherence to the intervention was imperfect, especially at later time points. t.co/ks5CpmHhtO

Recent work from the AAirDS study of HEPA airfilters in hospital wards. Acceptability of the devices has a significant impact on utilisation- and if the devices aren’t turned on they cant work. Important for implementation authors.elsevier.com/a/1k33PiVO0E...

🚨NHS Trust leadership 101 Forget truth: protect the organisation www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottis...

In February 2021, Vallance writes in his notes that it was “real struggle” to get Johnson to understand graphs from the Covid dashboard. Emphasises the importance of basic degree of scientific literacy in government, which the Prime Minister clearly did not possess.

Communication at all levels must be clear and this doesn’t seem to be the case (not pointing fingers). this also raises importance of transparency with public too which was why independent SAGE was established- to listen to and talk with the public directly. Full link to article pic taken from here