Pandemic exposes scientific rift over proving when germs are airborne

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'WHO's slow motion on this issue is unfortunately slowing the control of the pandemic,' said a University of Colorado chemist.

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The Geneva-based World Health Organization acknowledged this week that the novel coronavirus can spread through tiny droplets floating in the air, a nod to more than 200 experts in aerosol science who publicly complained that the U.N. agency had failed to warn the public about this risk.

Jimenez and other experts in aerosol transmission have said the WHO is holding too dearly to the notion that germs are spread primarily though contact with a contaminated person or object. That idea was a foundation of modern medicine, and explicitly rejected the obsolete miasma theory that originated in the Middle Ages postulating that poisonous, foul-smelling vapors made up of decaying matter caused diseases such as cholera and the Black Death.

For the WHO, such proof is necessary as it advises countries of every income and resource level to take more drastic measures against a pandemic that has killed more than 550,000 people globally, with more than 12 million confirmed infections. The agency also repeated a firm cutoff on the size of infectious droplets expelled in coughing and sneezing, noting that most larger droplets are unlikely to travel beyond one meter - the basis for their one-meter social distancing guidelines. Milton and others have said larger particles have been shown to spread much farther.

WHO spokeswoman Dr. Margaret Harris rejected the claim by critics that the agency is biased against the idea of aerosol transmission, saying it recognized the possibility of airborne transmission during medical procedures from early on in the pandemic.

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