WHO Reviews ’Current’ Evidence On Coronavirus Transmission Through Air : NPR
▻https://www.npr.org/2020/03/28/823292062/who-reviews-available-evidence-on-coronavirus-transmission-through-air
The World Health Organization says the virus that causes COVID-19 doesn’t seem to linger in the air or be capable of spreading through the air over distances of more than about 3 feet.
But at least one expert in virus transmission said it’s way too soon to know that.
“I think the WHO is being irresponsible in giving out that information. This misinformation is dangerous,” says Dr. Donald Milton, an infectious disease aerobiologist at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Health.
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“I don’t think they know, and I think they are talking out of their hats,” Milton says.
He says people like to think that there’s some sharp, black-and-white distinction between “airborne” viruses that can linger and float in the air and ones that spread only when embedded in larger moist droplets picked up through close contact, but the reality of transmission is far more nuanced.
“The epidemiologists say if it’s ’close contact,’ then it’s not airborne. That’s baloney,” he says.
When epidemiologists are working in the field, trying to understand an outbreak of an unknown pathogen, it’s not possible for them to know exactly what’s going on as a pathogen is spread from person to person, Milton says. “Epidemiologists cannot tell the difference between droplet transmission and short-range aerosol transmission.”
He says these are hard questions to answer, and scientists still argue over how much of the #transmission of influenza might be airborne.