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Specialists from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officially added the air route to the list of possible ways to spread the new coronavirus on Monday, confirming the views of several scientists who have been advocating for several months. due to greater awareness of this risk, reports AFP.
The CDC updated its health recommendations on its website Monday. “Certain infections can be transmitted by exposure to the virus present in small droplets and particles that can remain suspended in the air for minutes or hours.
These viruses can infect people who are less than two meters from the infected person or after the person leaves the area, “explained US specialists.
Measles, chickenpox, and tuberculosis are also transmitted by air.
Ventilate, ventilate, ventilate!
According to CDC experts, respiratory droplets of various sizes expelled in the vicinity of an infected person, when coughing, sneezing, singing, speaking and breathing, remain the main route of contamination.
But the new update, carried out 10 months after the start of the pandemic, confirms the validity of several studies that show that the new coronavirus, although not as contagious as measles, can be transmitted over a distance of more than two meters, a hypothesis that was neglected by the CDC and the World Health Organization (WHO) at the time of the emergence of this virus, called SARS-CoV-2.
The CDC highlights the importance of indoor ventilation to prevent contamination.
In contrast, infection through a contaminated surface “is not considered a common form of COVID-19 disease,” the CDC experts said.
What to do
According to this American health organization, the precautions to be taken remain unchanged: physical distance, use of a sanitary mask, washing hands, avoiding crowded rooms and isolating the sick.
Several American scientists have pushed for the update of these official health regulations, based on an outdated distinction between respiratory drops and aerosols, dating back to the 1930s.
“Aerosol viruses can remain suspended in the air for many seconds and even hours, like smoke, and can be inhaled,” experts from the University of California, Maryland and Virginia Tech wrote in a joint statement Monday.
