WHO to issue new brief on airborne transmission, following ‘active engagement’ with scientists

The World Health Organization (WHO) is set to issue a brief on the modes of transmission of the new coronavirus, a senior official said.

Epidemiologist Dr. Maria van Kerkhove, WHO technical lead on COVID-19, was responding to a journalist’s question about an open letter signed by hundreds of scientists urging the UN agency to update its recommendations on airborne transmission.

Dr. van Kerkhove said WHO welcomes interaction with the scientific community. She reported that the group first wrote to the UN agency on 1 April and there has been “active engagement” since then.

“Many of the signatories are engineers, which is a wonderful area of expertise, which adds to growing knowledge about the importance of ventilation which we feel also is very important”, she said.

WHO has been studying the various potential modes of coronavirus transmission, including by airborne or aerosol droplets, but also other channels such as from mother-to-child, and from animal-to-human.

The agency is producing a scientific brief that consolidates the growing knowledge around this subject, which will be issued in the coming days.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that although cases are accelerating globally, the peak of the pandemic has yet to be reached.

“While the number of deaths appears to have levelled off globally, in reality some countries have made significant progress in reducing the number of deaths, while in other countries, deaths are still on the rise”, he said.

“Where there has been progress in reducing deaths, countries have implemented targeted actions toward the most vulnerable groups, for example those people living in long-term care facilities.”

As of Tuesday, there were 11.4 million cases of COVID-19, and more than 535,000 deaths. Tedros said while it took 12 weeks to reach 400,000 cases worldwide, this same number was recorded over the past weekend alone.

Original source: UN News
Published on 07 July 2020