Even people stay more than 6 feet away could transmit the coronavirus: CDC

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in its revised guideline, informed that people more than six feet away could transmit the coronavirus indoors through very fine, aerosolised particles suspended in the air.

“Although infections through inhalation at distances greater than six feet from an infectious source are less likely than at closer distances, the phenomenon has been repeatedly documented under certain preventable circumstances,” the guidance said.

“These transmission events have involved the presence of an infectious person exhaling virus indoors for an extended time (more than 15 minutes and in some cases hours) leading to virus concentrations in the air space sufficient to transmit infections to people more than 6 feet away, and in some cases to people who have passed through that space soon after the infectious person left.”

The update comes after months of infectious disease experts urged the CDC and World Health Organization WHO to highlight the risk tiny particles suspended in the air can have in infection, and not focus only on “close contact,” a Times of India report said.

“C.D.C. has now caught up to the latest scientific evidence, and they’ve gotten rid of some old problematic terms and thinking about how transmission occurs,” Linsey Marr, an aerosol expert at Virginia Tech, tells the New York Times, reports Times of India.