The WHO writes in its latest scientific brief that the evidence of viral RNA “is not indicative of viable virus that could be transmissible”. The brief also points to its own analysis of more than 75,000 COVID-19 cases in China that did not report finding airborne transmission. But Ben Cowling says that “there wasn't a lot of evidence put forward to support the assessment” and, an absence of evidence does not mean SARS-CoV-2 is not airborne. The WHO did not respond to Nature’s questions about the evidence in time for publication.
Scientists in the United States have shown in the laboratory that the virus can survive in an aerosol and remain infectious for at least 3 hours4. Although the conditions in the study were “highly artificial”, there is probably “a non-zero risk of longer-range spread through the air”, says co-author Jamie Lloyd-Smith, an infectious-diseases researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles.
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