Published by the Royal Academy of Engineering, the report finds that leading engineers believe ventilation is too often neglected, and the Covid-19 pandemic in particular has exposed flaws in the way in which we design, manage and operate buildings.
With the government ending all lockdown rules from Monday but Covid cases rising rapidly again, experts have stressed the importance of employing simple steps to minimise the virus’s spread.
The report warns that unless the ventilation issues are addressed, future pandemics could impose high financial and health costs on society and constrain our ability to address other challenges such as climate change.
Efforts to increase resilience to infection must also work alongside the delivery of significant carbon emission savings from our buildings, the report said. But it warned that technological solutions are not a “silver bullet”, and uninformed reliance on technology can even have negative consequences.
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