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Early in the pandemic, the World Health Organization stated that SARS-CoV-2 was not transmitted through the air. That mistake and the prolonged process of correcting it sowed confusion and raises questions about what will happen in the next pandemic.
06 April 2022
Dyani Lewis
... On 23 December (2021), the World Health Organization (WHO) uttered the one word it had previously seemed incapable of applying to the virus SARS-CoV-2: ‘airborne’.
On its website, a page titled ‘Coronavirus disease (COVID-19): How is it transmitted?’ was quietly edited to state that a person can be infected “when infectious particles that pass through the air are inhaled at short range”, a process otherwise known as “short-range aerosol or short-range airborne transmission”. The website says that transmission can occur through “long-range airborne transmission” in poorly ventilated or crowded indoor settings “because aerosols can remain suspended in the air or travel farther than conversational distance”.
“It was a relief to see them finally use the word ‘airborne’, and to say clearly that airborne transmission and aerosol transmission are synonyms,” says aerosol chemist Jose-Luis Jimenez at the University of Colorado Boulder. ...
06 April 2022
Dyani Lewis
... On 23 December (2021), the World Health Organization (WHO) uttered the one word it had previously seemed incapable of applying to the virus SARS-CoV-2: ‘airborne’.
On its website, a page titled ‘Coronavirus disease (COVID-19): How is it transmitted?’ was quietly edited to state that a person can be infected “when infectious particles that pass through the air are inhaled at short range”, a process otherwise known as “short-range aerosol or short-range airborne transmission”. The website says that transmission can occur through “long-range airborne transmission” in poorly ventilated or crowded indoor settings “because aerosols can remain suspended in the air or travel farther than conversational distance”.
“It was a relief to see them finally use the word ‘airborne’, and to say clearly that airborne transmission and aerosol transmission are synonyms,” says aerosol chemist Jose-Luis Jimenez at the University of Colorado Boulder. ...
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