Covid virus is airborne and can spread beyond six feet, says top US medical body
Representative: A woman gets a Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine at a pop-up vaccination center at the beach, in South Beach, Florida, on 9 May 2021.
(AFP via Getty Images)The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Friday acknowledged that the SARS-CoV-2 virus behind the coronavirus pandemic is airborne and can be inhaled even when one is more than six feet away from an infected individual.
The new guidance is a change from the previous stance of the agency where it had said that infections happened through “close contact, not airborne transmission.”
Updating its public guidelines on the spread of Covid-19, the CDC further that the virus can be transmitted through very fine aerosolised particles released during respiration. The agency said that people release these respiratory fluids in the form of droplets during exhalation.
While the large droplets settle on a nearby surface within seconds to minutes, the agency said that the very fine droplets are “small enough that they can remain suspended in the air for minutes to hours.”
The CDC noted that although the risk of transmission is “greatest within three to six feet of an infectious person”, it has also recorded instances where the infection has been transmitted even though the person was at a distance greater than six feet. It said transmissions were observed in instances where an infectious person was exhaling the virus indoors for an extended period of time – more than 15 minutes and in some cases hours.
This, the agency said, leads to “virus concentration in the air space sufficient to transmit infections to people more than six feet away, and in some case to people who have passed through that space soon after the infectious person left.”
The medical body reiterated the existing recommendations to prevent the transmission of infection. These include physical distancing, wearing a well-fitting mask, good ventilation and avoiding crowded indoor spaces.
“These methods will reduce transmission both from inhalation of virus and deposition of the virus on exposed mucous membranes. Transmission through soiled hands and surfaces can be prevented by practising good hand hygiene and by environmental cleaning,” it cautioned.
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