Airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2: The world should face the reality
By Lidia Morawska, Junji Cao. Environment International, 2020
1,671 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Hand washing and maintaining social distance are the main measures recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) to avoid contracting COVID-19. Unfortunately, these measured do not prevent infection by inhalation of small droplets exhaled by an infected person that can travel distance of meters or tens of meters in the air and carry their viral content. Science explains the mechanisms of such transport and there is evidence that this is a significant route of infection in indoor environments. Despite this, no countries or authorities consider airborne spread of COVID-19 in their regulations to prevent infections transmission indoors. It is therefore extremely important, that the national authorities acknowledge the reality that the virus spreads through air, and recommend that adequate control measures be implemented to prevent further spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, in particularly removal of the virus-laden droplets from indoor air by ventilation.
Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Modeling and Simulation, Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6ab4e743f397524b577561b088b9d232a3ac3083
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Citations in the corpus
- COVID-19 and Public Transportation: Current Assessment, Prospects, and Research Needs (2020, background): “…than two meters due to airborne transmission, as reported by Shen et al. (2020) and further discussed in recent epidemiological contributions (Prather, Wang, and Schooley 2020; Morawska and Cao 2020; Setti et al. 2020), then there is still a risk of virus spreading without wearing a face mask.”
- The efficacy of social distance and ventilation effectiveness in preventing COVID-19 transmission (2020, neutral): “A number of studies have articulated that the COVID-19 virus is airborne (Morawska et al., 2020; Q, Y., W, N., Z, & W., 2020; Setti et al., 2020).”
- Comparison of virus concentration methods for the RT-qPCR-based recovery of murine hepatitis virus, a surrogate for SARS-CoV-2 from untreated wastewater (2020, neutral): “The primary transmission routes of SARS-CoV-2 are inhalation of aerosols/droplets and personto-person contact (Morawska and Cao, 2020; Yu et al., 2020).”
- SARS-CoV-2 Reverse Genetics Reveals a Variable Infection Gradient in the Respiratory Tract (2020, positive): “…for key aspects of SARs-CoV-2 transmission and pathogenesis: (1) transmission is mediated by airborne microparticles directly infecting the lung (Morawska and Cao, 2020; Wilson et al., 2020); or (2) the nose is the initial site of infection, followed by aspiration of the viral inoculum from the…”
- Airborne Transmission Route of COVID-19: Why 2 Meters/6 Feet of Inter-Personal Distance Could Not Be Enough (2020, methodology): “Based on the available knowledge, Morawska and Cao (2020) highlighted that small particles with viral content may travel in indoor environments, covering distances up to 10 meters starting from the emission sources, thus activating aerosol transmission [2].”
- How can airborne transmission of COVID-19 indoors be minimised? (2020, background): “…of viral transmission via small airborne microdroplets (also commonly referred to as ‘aerosols’) has been intensely discussed in the context of the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2/coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic (Lewis, 2020; Morawska and Cao, 2020).”
- What settings have been linked to SARS-CoV-2 transmission clusters? (2020, positive): “Increasing evidence suggests that transmission of SARS-CoV-2 can be airborne (Morawska, 2020); however, it is likely that outdoor transmission risk is lower (Nishiura et al., 2020).”