E3 Pandemic Response: Final Report

The document is the final report of E3 Excellence in Pandemic Response and
Enterprise Solutions (E3) project. The project was launched in 2021 to address
the need for resilient solutions to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 pandemic,
and any new pandemics, on societies. The three-and-a-half-year project
combines expertise from 7 Finnish research institutes and 22 companies, and
with its 12 M€ total budget it was one of the largest co-innovation projects ever
funded by Business Finland.

The E3 Final Report is a compilation of full papers and extended abstracts from
the main results of project work. It covers a broad range of topics in the
multidisciplinary E3 project from medicine and microbiology, through aerosol
physics and aerosol technology to building services engineering, and to
behavioural and business sciences. In addition to research done in laboratories,
interventions were done in hospitals and daycare centres to test the impact of
countermeasures in mitigating the spread of pathogens.

The most important single finding of the project was the result that, in daycare
centres, children's morbidity decreased by 18 percent when the air was cleaned
with air purifiers. The significant 18 percent reduction was achieved without
implementing other infection mitigation strategies beyond air purification. The
finding was a result of unique combination of clinical and technical research,
enabled by the multidisciplinary approach of E3 project.