SAR-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 can spread through air: Study

A new study in the medical journal ‘Lancet’ provided “consistent strong evidence” that the SAR-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, can be transmitted through the air. This leaves people unprotected with the public health measures that are currently followed in many countries across the world, six experts from the USA, UK and Canada stated, NDTV reported. 

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One of the experts to claim that public health measures leave people unprotected is Jose-Luis Jiminez, a chemist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and the University of Colorado Boulder. “The evidence supporting airborne transmission is overwhelming, and evidence supporting large droplet transmission is almost non-existent”, said Jiminez. “It is urgent that the World Health Organization and other public health agencies adapt their description of transmission to the scientific evidence so that the focus of mitigation is put on reducing airborne transmission”.

Trish Greenhalgh from the University of Oxford, who leads a team of experts, assessed published research and recognised that there were 10 lines of evidence to support the existence of the airborne nature of the virus, according to reports from NDTV. It is also found that the transmission rates of the virus are much higher indoors than outdoors, and transmission is significantly lessened when indoor ventilation. 

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The team emphasised the nature of transmission of people who do not cough or sneeze, and they found it to account for at least 40% of all transmission. The silent transmission, as it is called, has been a key way for the spread of COVID-19 around the world, showed the assessment.