This is an airborne virus, so it behaves a lot like smoke or vape. If you're near someone, you're definitely breathing it in.

It doesn’t take much to fill up a room with the virus, and it hangs around and lingers in the air for hours. Most people use hand gel religiously - yet breathing the air is how you get the virus. 

Those leaky surgical masks don’t do anything to stop an airborne virus, nor were they designed to. They don’t form a proper seal around your face, so virus-filled air is easily sucked in or sprayed out. Have you ever smelled a gust of perfume or smoke while wearing one? Exactly.

We all need to wear properly fitting N95/FFP2 masks. They really work: you can be standing right next to an infected person, but if you’re both wearing properly fitting FFP2 masks, the chance of getting infected is about one in 700 (0.14 per cent).

Yes they’re a bit more expensive, but caring about my friend means using masks that actually work.

It only works if you actually wear it. There is no magic loophole that lets you go anywhere near my friend without a proper N95/FFP2 mask and good ventilation. An airborne virus doesn’t care what your excuse is.

Many people seem to think a negative result on a lateral flow test is a "green light" to ignore the virus, but this is dangerously wrong.

A negative result should be used with other safety measures like good ventilation and masks. This is because there is a good chance the test is wrong, particularly when testing someone without symptoms. Despite claims that LFTs are able to identify the vast majority of infections, they have actually been found to miss between 20 and 81% of positive cases.

This widespread misunderstanding has potentially led to millions of people being falsely reassured and visiting vulnerable relatives while infectious.

The tests were never supposed to be a "green light" to drop all safety measures. Instead, a positive result should be seen as a red light to stop everything and isolate immediately, while a negative result is an orange light to continue with the usual caution, such as wearing masks and ventilating well.

Imagine you’ve filled the room with smoke because you suck at cooking. We drop everything and rush to open a window to get the smoke out, yet we hardly lift a finger to remove a highly infectious and life-threatening virus from the air we breathe. Wearing a mask but sitting in a room full of virus means you are assuming your mask is 100% effective - which it isn't.

Portable air purifiers with HEPA filters can play a huge role in removing the virus from the air. They can't replace the need to wear masks, but they can be very effective. We desperately need them in classrooms right now.