Member-only story
Scientists Say Airborne Coronavirus Fuels Superspreader Events
White House outbreak illustrates the risk of an underappreciated Covid-19 infection route, scientists say
The coronavirus spreads significant distances indoors via invisible aerosols that can linger for hours, building up and causing superspreader events that can infect several people, a group of virus-transmission experts emphasized in an open letter published today in the online version of the journal Science. This airborne transmission is likely the most prevalent path for Covid-19 infections, they say, adding that health officials must communicate this risk more clearly.
“The reality is that airborne transmission is the main way that transmission happens at close range with prolonged contact,” says one of the letter’s co-authors, Donald Milton, MD, an environmental health professor at the University of Maryland and an expert on airborne infections. “You can’t take your mask off at six feet.”
The indoor superspreader risk has been known for months and communicated frequently by scientists since the spring. But outdated research based on science from the 1930s had caused many public health officials and agencies to focus on the six-foot circle of supposed protection.
