Melbourne’s second wave of COVID-19 last year, which led to a lockdown lasting more than 100 days, provided us with many lessons about controlling transmission. Some of these are pertinent as New South Wales endures its ongoing lockdown.

One feature of Melbourne’s second wave was a disproportionate impact on health-care workers, patients in hospital, and residents in aged-care homes.

In response to this, a team of Melbourne-based infectious clinicians, engineers and aerosol scientists came together to learn from each other about how to mitigate the risk of airborne COVID-19 transmission in healthcare.

We are some members of that team. As we hear about COVID-19 spreading in Sydney hospitals during the current outbreak, we want to share what we learnt about how to potentially minimise airborne COVID-19 spread in the hope it’s helpful to our colleagues.