After hundreds of scientists wrote to the World Health Organisation (WHO) about the airborne spread of coronavirus, the world body has admitted that the `evidence is emerging’ about it.
Dr Maria Van Kerkove, technical lead on COVID-19 pandemic at WHO, said in a press briefing, “We have been talking about the possibility of airborne transmission and aerosol transmission as one of the modes of transmission of COVID-19.”
“In April and May, we were dealing with 100,000 cases a day,” said Dr. Michael Ryan during a Tuesday press briefing. “Today we’re dealing with 200,000 a day.”
Ryan said that the number of deaths appeared to be stable for the moment, but he cautioned that there is often a lag time between when cases increase and when deaths are reported, due to the amount of time it takes for the coronavirus to run its course in patients.
Members of the WHO technical committee said that they are working on publishing a scientific brief about how and if the coronavirus can spread in the air.
”We’ve been working on this for several weeks now and we’ve engaged with a large number of (scientific) groups,” Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, Head of the Technical Committee said.
Earlier, around 200 scientists from different countries have urged the WHO and others to acknowledge that the coronavirus can spread in the air.
