COVID-19 and Airborne Transmission: Science Rejected, Lives Lost. Can Society Do Better?

Abstract

This is an account that should be heard of an important struggle: the struggle of a large group of experts who came together at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic to warn the world about the risk of airborne transmission and the consequences of ignoring it. We alerted the World Health Organization (WHO) about the potential significance of the airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and the urgent need to control it, but our concerns were dismissed. Here we describe how this happened and the consequences. We hope that by reporting this story, we can raise awareness of the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration and the need to be open to new evidence, and to prevent it from happening again. Acknowledgement of an issue and the emergence of new evidence related to it, is the first necessary step towards finding effective mitigation solutions.

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Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Morawska, L Bahnfleth, W Bluyssen, PM Boerstra, A Buonanno, G Dancer, SJ Floto, A Franchimon, F Haworth, C Hogeling, J Isaxon, C Jimenez, JL Kurnitski, J Li, Y Loomans, M Marks, G Marr, LC Mazzarella, L Melikov, AK Miller, S Milton, DK Nazaroff, W Nielsen, PV Noakes, C https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3084-7467 Peccia, J Querol, X Sekhar, C Seppänen, O Tanabe, S-I Tellier, R Tham, KW Wargocki, P Wierzbicka, A
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Infectious Diseases Society of America. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial reproduction and distribution of the work, in any medium, provided the original work is not altered or transformed in any way, and that the work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com
Keywords:	airborne transmission, airborne infection spread, coronavirus, COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2 virus
Dates:	Published: 15 May 2023 Published (online): 10 February 2023 Accepted: 6 February 2023
Institution:	The University of Leeds
Academic Units:	The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Civil Engineering (Leeds)
Depositing User:	Symplectic Publications
Date Deposited:	16 Feb 2023 08:36
Last Modified:	16 Jun 2023 15:34
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Identification Number:	10.1093/cid/ciad068
Related URLs:	PubMed URL
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:196375

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COVID-19 and Airborne Transmission: Science Rejected, Lives Lost. Can Society Do Better?

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