The governments Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) have published further documents, including ‘SPI-B/EMG: MHCLG Housing Impacts Paper’.
Prof Robert Dingwall, Professor of Sociology, Nottingham Trent University, said:
“This is a comprehensive discussion of factors that may be relevant to transmission within households – but it is unlikely to be of much practical value in the management of the present pandemic. It is impracticable to suppose that household size and housing stock can be brought into better alignment within a short period of time by any means that would be acceptable in a democracy. Given that the replacement cycle for the UK housing stock is estimated at 400 years, it also seems unlikely that any changes in Building Regulations would have much impact, although there may be some scope for retro-fitting if appropriate incentives were offered to property owners. Given this, it is unlikely that it would be possible to keep people further apart at home, unless they were part of the minority who live in big houses that are under-occupied. There may be some scope for encouraging attention to personal and respiratory hygiene, but the effects are likely to be small. Again much would depend upon access to facilities for handwashing or having rooms large enough to maintain distance – and new-build construction in the UK has the least space of any European country. There may be some issues to think about for the long-term but the ideas here are mostly not capable of making any difference in the short-term.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/spi-bemg-covid-19-housing-impacts-10-september-2020
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