The WHO on Tuesday acknowledged “evidence emerging” of the airborne spread of COVID-19, after a group of scientists urged the global body to update its guidance on how the respiratory disease passes between people.
“We have been talking about the possibility of airborne transmission and aerosol transmission as one of the modes of transmission of COVID-19,” WHO technical lead for COVID-19 Maria Van Kerkhove told a news briefing.
The WHO has previously said that the novel coronavirus spreads primarily through small droplets expelled from the nose and mouth of an infected person, and that they quickly sink to the ground.
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However, in an open letter to the Geneva, Switzerland-based agency, published on Monday in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, 239 scientists in 32 countries outlined evidence that they said shows that floating virus particles can infect people who breathe them in.
Because those smaller exhaled particles can linger in the air, the scientists in the group had been urging WHO to update its guidance.
“We wanted them to acknowledge the evidence,” said University of Colorado chemist Jose Jimenez, who signed the paper. “This is definitely not an attack on the WHO. It’s a scientific debate, but we felt we needed to go public because they were refusing to hear the evidence after many conversations with them.”
Speaking at Tuesday’s briefing in Geneva, WHO technical lead for infection prevention and control Benedetta Allegranzi said that there is evidence emerging of airborne transmission of COVID-19, but that it is not definitive.
“The possibility of airborne transmission in public settings — especially under very specific conditions: crowded, closed, poorly ventilated settings that have been described — cannot be ruled out,” she said. “However, the evidence needs to be gathered and interpreted, and we continue to support this.”
Historically, there has been a fierce opposition in the medical profession to the notion of aerosol transmission, and the bar for proof has been set very high, Jimenez said, adding that a key concern has been a fear of panic.
“If people hear airborne, healthcare workers will refuse to go to the hospital,” he said.
The WHO panel assessing the evidence of airborne transmission is not scientifically diverse and lacks representation from experts in aerosol transmission, Jimenez said.
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