COVID-19 creates debate among scientists over disease transmission

CHICAGO: The coronavirus pandemic has created a debate among medical experts over disease transmission.

The World Health Organisation earlier this week acknowledged that the novel coronavirus can spread through tiny droplets floating in the air, a nod to more than 200 experts in aerosol science who publicly complained that the organization had failed to warn the public about this risk.

Yet the WHO still insists on more definitive proof that the novel coronavirus, which causes the respiratory disease COVID-19, can be transmitted through the air, a trait that would put it on par with measles and tuberculosis and require even more stringent measures to contain its spread.

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Jimenez and other experts in aerosol transmission said that the WHO is holding too dearly to the notion that germs are spread primarily through contact with a contaminated person or object. That idea was a foundation of modern medicine, and explicitly rejected the obsolete miasma theory that originated in the Middle Ages.

For the WHO, such proof is necessary as it advises countries of every income and resource level to take more drastic measures against a pandemic that has killed more than 550,000 people globally, with more than 12 million confirmed infections.