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A group of people eat pizza while dining al fresco at L&B Spumoni Gardens in Brooklyn on Sunday. The CDC revised its guidelines on how Covid-19 spreads.
Photo:
Kathy Willens / Associated Press
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said tiny airborne particles can spread the coronavirus, and revised its guidelines on this just weeks after the health agency acknowledged the role of the particles and then abruptly removed them.
The guidelines for how the coronavirus spreads were initially updated last month to recognize a role, and possibly the main one, played by small aerosol particles in the spread of the virus. But the agency removed the changes just days later, saying a draft version of the proposed changes had been published in error.
In its latest revisions to the guidelines on Monday, the CDC recognized a role for tiny airborne particles, although the latest drafting says they are not the primary way the virus spreads.
The virus is primarily transmitted through respiratory droplets by people who are physically close to or have direct contact with a person with Covid-19, the CDC said. However, the agency also acknowledged evidence indicating that the virus can spread under certain conditions through smaller particles in the air to people more than 6 feet away.
“These transmissions occurred within confined spaces that had inadequate ventilation,” the CDC said. “Sometimes the person breathed with difficulty, for example, while singing or exercising.”
In such situations, the number of smaller infectious particles produced by one person with the virus became concentrated enough to spread to others, the CDC said. The people who became infected were in space at the same time as the person who was transmitting the virus, or shortly after the person with Covid-19 left, the CDC said.
“Available data indicates that it is much more common for the virus that causes Covid-19 to spread through close contact with a person who has Covid-19 than through airborne transmission,” the CDC added.
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Write to Caitlin McCabe at [email protected] and Betsy McKay at [email protected]
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