WHO considers ‘airborne precautions’ As study shows coronavirus can survive in air
World Health Organization is considering "airborne precautions" for medical staff after a new study showed the coronavirus can survive in the air in some settings.
The
virus is transmitted through droplets, or little bits of liquid, mostly
through sneezing or coughing, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of WHO's
emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, told reporters during a virtual
news conference on Monday. "When you do an aerosol-generating procedure
like in a medical care facility, you have the possibility to what we
call aerosolize these particles, which means they can stay in the air a
little bit longer."
She
added: "It's very important that health-care workers take additional
precautions when they're working on patients and doing those
procedures."
World health
officials say the respiratory disease spreads through human-to-human
contact, droplets carried through sneezing and coughing as well as germs
left on inanimate objects. The coronavirus can go airborne, staying
suspended in the air depending on factors such as heat and humidity,
they said.
Kerkhove said
health officials are aware of several studies in a number of countries
looking at the different environmental conditions that COVID-19 can
persist. Scientists are specifically looking at how humidity,
temperature and ultraviolet lighting affects the disease as well as how
long it lives on different surfaces, including steel, she said.
Health
officials use the information to make sure WHO's guidance is
appropriate, and "so far ... we are confident that the guidance that we
have is appropriate," she added. Health officials recommend medical
staff wear so-called N95 masks because they filter out about 95% of all
liquid or airborne particles.
"In
health-care facilities, we make sure health-care workers use standard
droplet precautions with the exception ... that they're doing an
aerosol-generating procedure," she said.
Robert
Redfield, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, told Congress last month that the agency was aggressively
evaluating how long COVID-19 can survive, particularly on surfaces.
"On
copper and steel, it's pretty typical, it's pretty much about two
hours," Redfield said at a House hearing. "But I will say on other
surfaces — cardboard or plastic — it's longer, and so we are looking at
this."
Redfield added
infections contracted from surfaces rather than through the air could
have contributed to the outbreak on the Diamond Princess cruise ship.
Separately,
WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Monday that
there's been a rapid escalation of COVID-19 cases over the past week,
adding, "we have not seen an urgent enough escalation in testing,
isolation and contact tracing, which is the backbone of the response."
"We
have a simple message for all countries: test, test, test. Test every
suspected case, if they test positive, isolate them and find out who
they have been in contact with two days before they developed symptoms
and test those people, too," Tedros said.
CNBC
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