United States: The WHO health report reveals that it has become easier to detect diseases such as Covid-19, influenza, and measles amongst many other respiratory diseases as compared to before.
WHO experts examined various diseases
After various wrong steps taken during the pandemic, the WHO made 50 scientists who are experts in respective fields such as virology, epidemiology, aerosol science, and bioengineering, among other specialties.
They spent two years carrying out reviews of the evidence of the spread of airborne viruses and bacterial growth.
What does the WHO research suggest?
The WHO report is not deterministic, and it does not offer specific rules of action for governments, hospitals and the public; however, the report has certainly succeeded in showing the true scale of the issue that should be addressed.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is faced with identifying how this can be applied during modification of their own guidelines in infection control in healthcare settings.
The WHO determined that airborne transmission is the system whereby the sick individual exhales some pathogens that follow tiny saliva particles in the air, which later on are inhaled by other individuals.
However, it may seem obvious, and some researchers have been insisting on such a view for the last several years. However, the widespread notion that Covid was airborne was not accepted by health authorities until more than a year into the pandemic, as kffhealthnews.org reported.
Particularly, they depended on a conception based on the fact that viruses such as respiratory ones come mainly and transmit via droplets of moisture that are spread out from the nostrils or mouth of a person who is infected.
These micro-droplets when transferred direclty to mouth, nose, or eyes of others, or gets transferred to the fingers and is subsequently carried to the mouth, nose, or eyes. Consequently, officials and experts have clarified that although this kind of passage of infectious agents continues among the very young, people commonly become infected via inhaling airborne viruses.
What do the experts have to say?
Julian Tang, a clinical virologist at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, who also advised WHO on the report, said, “This is a complete U-turn,” as kffhealthnews.org reported.
Moreover, Peg Seminario, an occupational health and safety specialist in Bethesda, Maryland, who welcomed the shift after several years of resistance from health authorities, said, “The dogma that droplets are a major mode of transmission is the ‘flat Earth’ position now,” she said. “Hurray! We are finally recognizing that the world is round.”
Additionally, Lisa Brosseau, an aerosol expert and a consultant at the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy in Minnesota, warned of a repeat of 2020 if something like that repeats itself.
Brosseau said, “The rubber hits the road when you make decisions on how to protect people,” and, “Aerosol scientists may see this report as a big win because they think everything will now follow from the science. But that’s not how this works, and there are still major barriers.”