Forget temperature checks and deep-cleaning surfaces. The best way to protect people from Covid-19 as they return to offices and other indoor spaces is to bolster air quality and vaccination coverage, experts on the transmission of the virus say.
Their consensus reflects an evolving understanding of the spread of a virus that the World Health Organization declared the cause of a pandemic two years ago this Friday. Deep-cleaning surfaces and temperature checks—still a mainstay at many businesses—have been understood for many months to be of relatively little help stopping the virus from spreading. Rather, as businesses and communities across the U.S. begin what is shaping up to be the broadest return yet to pre-pandemic behaviors, transmission and infectious-disease experts said broad vaccine coverage and good air hygiene stand out as the most important mitigation efforts.