Just days after saying COVID-19 was transmittable by air and through people emitting aerosols the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has made a U-turn and removed the guidance from its website.
It said the guidance was posted in error, according to several news reports. The guidance was first posted on the agency's website Friday and recommended, among other things, people use air purifiers to reduce airborne germs indoors to limit the spread of the disease.
"Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is currently updating its recommendations regarding airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Once this process has been completed the update language will be posted," the agency said in a statement.
It had said COVID-19 could spread through airborne particles that can remain suspended in the air and travel beyond 6 feet, Reuters reported. Currently, the agency's guidance says the virus mainly spreads from person to person through respiratory droplets which can land in the mouth or nose of people nearby.
A report in The New York Times said that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance in September on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's website was not written by the agency's scientists and was posted over their objections.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wants to convey that aerosol transmission is possible, but not the primary method coronavirus spreads, according to a person familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
Another person familiar with the matter said in the report an internal push among some people within the agency to better communicate information about aerosol transmission led to the change but that the new guidelines didn't go through appropriate vetting. The agency is reviewing how that happened, the person said.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization hasn't changed its policy on aerosol transmission of the coronavirus, it said, according to an Al Jazeera report. The World Health Organization still believes the disease is primarily spread through droplets but, in enclosed crowded spaces with inadequate ventilation, aerosol transmission can occur, the report quoted World Health Organization emergencies program executive director Mike Ryan saying.
The World Health Organization has said COVID-19 primarily spreads through respiratory droplets that pass when an infected person coughs, sneezes or breathes, according to statements. Studies have shown that the coronavirus could spread through aerosols in the air, and the World Health Organization has said it is monitoring "emerging evidence" of possible airborne transmission.
The international agency's position "on this remains the same," Ryan said, "and we've always said going back over months and months about the potential for different kinds of roots of transmission and particularly driven by the context, the proximity, the intensity, the duration and the potential for different forms of transmission."
Earlier in September U.S. President Donald Trump argued with comments from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director who said masks might be even more effective than a vaccine for the novel coronavirus.
Meanwhile, the worldwide count of people who have died from the virus is fast nearing 1 million. More than 30 million infections have been tallied around the world with the U.S. contributing more than 6.7 million COVID-19 cases.
