Nada Hamad | If COVID is here to stay, we must demand clean air in our shared spaces

I also don't want to keep picking up every virus my kids generously share with me on a regular basis nor do I want them breathing increasing levels of air pollution.

I also shouldn't have to worry about the mould that accumulates in my home every time we get a rainy season.

Cleaning the air in schools, hospitals, workplaces, public spaces and in indoor home design and government regulation will do that. This was discussed throughout the Clean Air Forum hosted in Canberra recently.

I moderated the forum which brought together a diverse group of professionals from all walks of life, disciplines, experiences and insights and will hopefully be the catalyst for bold action.

The quality of discussion, ideas, science and innovations to solve the problem of how are we going to learn from the pandemic and make the world safer for this generation and the next was exceptional.

Chief health officer Professor Paul Kelly opened the day by definitively stating that COVID is airborne and future waves are inevitable, but that there is a commitment from government to protect those vulnerable to severe disease.

COVID has been a non-event for many but for a not insignificant proportion it has upended their lives. Loss of a loved one, a carer or friend, loss of livelihood and financial stress and even loss of health and vitality that may have been taken for granted. The fabric of our community has been forever changed.

Vaccination, social distancing and masking have all been part of the rush to protect ourselves. We could debate the best approach to mitigate pandemic risk, but it is clear that no single solution will solve this global problem.

The biggest promising opportunity that has taken too long to bring to the table is about cleaning the air we breathe. We share the air, and the COVID virus takes advantage of this. What if we could remove it from the air? Remove its vehicle so to speak.

We need to start thinking about what is in our air that is harmful and learn from the lessons of how we have and continue to manage threats of tuberculosis, asbestos, silica and tobacco.

The problem with focusing on protecting the vulnerable is that you cannot tell who is vulnerable.

I didn't know I was vulnerable or why. Some people have health conditions that have not declared themselves yet, some have invisible disabilities and some negative social determinants of health that are overlooked in the research we use as evidence for our policies.

Also, as Plum Stone noted in one session, "long COVID is the elephant in the room".

While we continue to focus on the risk of death and ignore the growing risk of long-term complications of COVID, we ignore the accumulating risk of recurrent infections on our health and the future health of our children. The legacy of the pandemic will be the lives lost and the collective loss of health into the future.

In the final panel of the day, Colin Kinner founder and program director of the Clean Air Accelerator likened clean air solutions to "when the internet first came along", a formative but exciting time developing something we now struggle to imagine life without.

The forum made clear that there are visionaries, inventors, change makers and policymakers in Australia and internationally who are ready to take on the clean air revolution. The legacy of the pandemic must include the realisation that clean air is fundamental to health and that, as a country, we seized the opportunity to lead the world in innovation, public health and industry.

One highlight of the forum was Dr Ian Longley's presentation sharing his experiences of educating New Zealand school students on the importance of clean air in their classrooms.

He noted that children already understand the basic principles of clean air, recounting a story where they were asked what they would do if they had to deal with an "offensive fart", to which the students responded with the ingenious answer: "open the windows, doors and get out of there!"

That is in fact how I "live" with COVID and long COVID. I risk assess and monitor the air around me, when my portable CO2 monitor beeps, I "open the windows, doors and get out of there".

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I carry a portable HEPA filter so that when I want to share a meal with someone, I can clean the air we breathe and lowering the risk of transmission.

When I was invited to commemorate an historic moment in a photograph, I was able to take my mask off for a moment in the presence of Australian made HEPA filters that cleaned the air so I could smile with pride that, as a country, we have embraced the science on COVID being airborne and now the best and brightest are rolling up their sleeves and taking on the challenge laid down by Professor Paul Kelly to make it feasible and affordable. This can clearly be done and must be done. This we owe to our children.