The Lancet medical journal, the world’s oldest and best-known general medical journals assessment has found “consistent, strong evidence” that the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes Coronavirus is predominantly transmitted through the air.  This supports the first theories months after the first outbreak reported in China’s Wuhan, where around 200 scientists from 32 nations last July wrote to the World Health Organization, saying there is evidence that the coronavirus is airborne.

The airborne theory became redundant when new theories emerged emphasizing that the virus is vastly transmitted when large droplets exhaled by those infected by COVID-19 settle on surfaces and contaminate them.

Due to this theory, public health authorities failed to administer measures to treat the airborne nature of the virus, leaving people unprotected enabling the virus to spread wildly in the air, according to six experts from the UK, the USA, and Canada, including a chemist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and the University of Colorado Boulder, Jose-Luis Jimenez,

Jose-Luis Jimenez said, “The evidence supporting airborne transmission is overwhelming, and evidence supporting large droplet transmission is almost non-existent…it is urgent that the World Health Organization and other public health agencies adapt their description of transmission to the scientific evidence so that the focus of mitigation is put on reducing airborne transmission.”

The researchers from the UK, the US, and Canada reviewed published scientific studies giving ten reasons as evidence.

They gave evidence from cruise ships,  superspreader events( events in which an infectious disease is spread much more than usual, while an unusually contagious organism infected with a disease is known as a superspreader) in indoor areas such as choir concerts, and care homes.  These occasions show patterns that are not indicated by droplets or fomites [contaminated objects], suggesting the “dominance of aerosol transmission”, said the analysis published in journal Lancet on Thursday.

Superspreader events, cases where one person diagnosed with COVID-19 goes to infect several others, are believed to be among the key reasons why Sars-CoV-2 has infected 138 million people the world over.

The COVID-19 cases aboard the Diamond Princess Cruise Ship in February 2020 was one of the first examples of a super-spreader event. At least 700 people on the ship were infected during the voyage and its subsequent quarantine near the Yokohama coast in Japan.

It is also concluded that transmission rates of COVID-19 are much higher indoors than outdoors, and transmission is greatly reduced by indoor ventilation.

They produced evidence such as the Skagit Choir outbreak in which 53 people became infected from a single infected case. Studies have confirmed these events cannot be adequately explained by close contact or touching shared surfaces or objects.

They also stated that the silent, asymptomatic or presymptomatic transmission of COVID-19 is from people who are not coughing or sneezing of at least 40 percent of all transmission. They say this silent transmission is the predominant method through which SARS-CoV-2 has spread around the world, “supporting a predominantly airborne mode of transmission,” according to the research team. The researchers also gave instances of long-range transmission of the virus between people in adjacent rooms in hotels; people who were never in each other’s presence.

In all these studies, the team found little to no evidence that the virus spreads easily via large droplets, which fall quickly through the air and contaminate surfaces.

“We were able to identify and interpret highly complex and specialist papers on the dynamics of fluid flows and the isolation of live virus,” lead author Greenhalgh said. “While some individual papers were assessed as weak, overall the evidence base for airborne transmission is extensive and robust. There should be no further delay in implementing measures around the world to protect against such transmission.”

The new work has serious implications for public health measures designed to mitigate the pandemic. While the “droplet measures” such as handwashing and surface cleaning are important, still should be given less emphasis than airborne measures, which deal with inhalation of infectious particles suspended in the air.

If an infectious virus is primarily airborne, someone can potentially be infected when they inhale aerosols produced when an infected person exhales, speaks, shouts, sings, or sneezes. So airborne control measures include reducing crowding, air filtration, ventilation, and the amount of time people spend indoors, wearing masks whenever indoors (even if not within 6 feet or 2 meters of others), a good quality mask changed frequently and well fitted,  and higher-grade PPE for healthcare and other staff when working in contact with SARS-CoV-2 patients.

Per this new evidence, good high-grade MASKING at all times is very important along with clean pure air.

The bottom line is that people cannot keep masking indoors,  and ultimately everyone has to develop greater immunity, and in time, herd immunity also known as ‘population immunity’, is the indirect protection from an infectious disease that happens when a population is immune either through vaccination or immunity developed through the previous infection. WHO supports achieving ‘herd immunity’ through vaccination, not by allowing disease to spread through any segment of the population, as this would result in unnecessary cases and deaths.

An airborne virus would, however, have more access to people and anyone with weaker immunity systems, the old, or people with preexisting medical ailments would succumb to the virus. Thus, right now, apart from vaccinations, medications, maintaining a healthy diet, vitamins, vitamin D, masking, good hygiene, etc., humans are still waiting for a greater breakthrough to defeat coronavirus…

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