SINGAPORE: The World Health Organization (WHO) has said that airborne transmission of COVID-19 is unlikely to be a big driver of the disease.
Professor Dale Fisher, who chairs the WHO’s Global Outbreak and Alert and Response Network (GOARN), said that the health organization maintains that the virus is spread mostly by contact and droplet spread.
“Outside of the hospital, we really do not see the airborne transmission as a big driver. That’s where we stand,” said Prof Fisher, a senior infectious diseases consultant at the National University Hospital.
Agreeing, Associate Professor Hsu Li Yang, program leader for infectious diseases at the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, pointed out that the transmission of COVID-19 occurs in a continuum.
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Only a very small number of diseases are believed to be spread via aerosols, or tiny floating particles. These include measles and tuberculosis two highly contagious pathogens that can linger in the air for hours and require extreme precautions to prevent exposure.
The experts agree on this: COVID-19 does not spread the same way a typical airborne virus does floating down the streets for many hours and infecting people as it moves in and out of homes.
Some researchers have said, however, that the virus does travel much farther than the 1m to 2m expected of a droplet-borne illness, putting people in prolonged contact at close range, especially indoors, at risk.
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