do they sample the air in the MRT and/or buses to check for the presence of air-borne COVID?
If Covid is airborne, that means wearing a mask is pointless.
Those who take MRT rides should remember that public announcements were made telling people to refrain from talking to each other or on their phones, to prevent the spread of the virus through water droplets.![]()
There is absolutely no doubt that Covid is airborne. The evidence was clear way back in April 2020. It is the primary reason why masks don't work. If they worked there would be a distinct difference in the rate of transmission between jurisdictions with a mask mandate and those without.
May 4, 2021,06:30pm EDT|492,338 views
WHO Finally Admits Coronavirus Is Airborne. It’s Too Late
JV Chamary
Contributor
Over a year since declaring Covid-19 a pandemic, the World Health Organization has finally admitted that Coronavirus is airborne.
Aerosol researchers started warning that "the world should face the reality" of airborne transmission in April 2020. Then in June, some claimed that it was "the dominant route for the spread of COVID-19".
In July, 239 scientists signed an open letter appealing to the medical community and governing bodies to recognize the potential risk of airborne transmission. That same month (by coincidence, not as a result of the letter), WHO released a new scientific brief on transmission of SARS-CoV-2 that stated:
“Short-range aerosol transmission, particularly in specific indoor locations, such as crowded and inadequately ventilated spaces over a prolonged period of time with infected persons cannot be ruled out.”
Epidemiologist Bill Hanage interpreted WHO's statement to mean: "While it is reasonable to think it can happen, there's not consistent evidence that it is happening often." In other words, WHO believed that spreading via aerosols was rare.
Research
As Hanage told The New York Times, WHO staff were looking for proof that would falsify their existing beliefs: "They are still challenged by the absence of evidence, and the difficulty of proving a negative."
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WHO Was Wrong About Coronavirus Being Airborne, But Why?
Virologist Julian Tang added that "WHO is being overly cautious and shortsighted unnecessarily." He also criticized its approach to avoiding hazards: "By recognizing aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and recommending improved ventilation facilities to be upgraded or installed, you can improve the health of people."
According to primary healthcare expert Trish Greenhalgh, there was another problem — members of WHO's scientific committee didn't agree on how to interpret the data: "The push-pull of that committee is palpable. As everyone knows, if you ask a committee to design a horse, you get a camel."
WHO's scientific briefs aren't official guidance, and so its reluctance to recognize that Coronavirus is airborne created a bigger issue: a lack of health advice.
The importance of providing the public with information is highlighted by a search for 'Coronavirus transmission' because the top result is a Q&A section on WHO's website — which until recently didn't acknowledge the contribution of aerosols.
On 30 April 2021, almost 10 months after WHO said it would review the research on airborne transmission, it finally updated its Q&A page with the following statement:
“Current evidence suggests that the virus spreads mainly between people who are in close contact with each other, typically within 1 metre (short-range). A person can be infected when aerosols or droplets containing the virus are inhaled or come directly into contact with the eyes, nose, or mouth. The virus can also spread in poorly ventilated and/or crowded indoor settings, where people tend to spend longer periods of time. This is because aerosols remain suspended in the air or travel farther than 1 metre (long-range).”
WHO's statement is too little, too late.
Reasons
Why has the World Health Organization been so slow to offer public health guidance?
As I explained in my article '4 Reasons Why WHO Won't Admit Coronavirus Is Airborne', there are four (not mutually exclusive) explanations for its reluctant response.
For historical reasons, WHO's staff assume that virus-laden droplets must spread over short distances, for instance, which (as Hanage pointed out) then leads to a need for scientific evidence to disprove that assumption.
WHO is also hampered by sociopolitical factors and how its decisions might be perceived by the public or its various stakeholders — including the countries that fund its activities.
But the most likely explanation for WHO's slow progress is simply bureaucracy. The organization decided that its own staff should review all the evidence for airborne transmission. According to Soumya Swaminathan, WHO's chief scientist, they were carefully reviewing 500 studies every day.
WHO made a rod for its own back.
A cynic would say that its scientists created busy-work to justify their jobs, as they could have instead consulted some of the 239 researchers who had signed the letter on airborne transmission. Why did WHO's scientists believe they understood more about aerosols than aerosol experts?
Regardless of the reason, WHO positioned itself as the sole authority that could judge the research. In doing so, it put its personal beliefs on what constitutes scientific rigor over the need for health guidance when speed was of the essence.
Since mid-2020, about 2.7 million people have died of Covid. While it's obviously unfair to pin that figure on WHO, we should consider how many deaths could have been prevented if it had listened to researchers who are specialists in their field.
WHO failed to consider that practical advice — to recommend that the public use caution and wear face masks to block airborne droplets — has no major downsides when compared to the alternative, which is to potentially allow people to spread Covid.
It's better to be safe than sorry.
There is absolutely no doubt that Covid is airborne. The evidence was clear way back in April 2020. It is the primary reason why masks don't work. If they worked there would be a distinct difference in the rate of transmission between jurisdictions with a mask mandate and those without.
May 4, 2021,06:30pm EDT|492,338 views
WHO Finally Admits Coronavirus Is Airborne. It’s Too Late
JV Chamary
Contributor
Over a year since declaring Covid-19 a pandemic, the World Health Organization has finally admitted that Coronavirus is airborne.
Aerosol researchers started warning that "the world should face the reality" of airborne transmission in April 2020. Then in June, some claimed that it was "the dominant route for the spread of COVID-19".
In July, 239 scientists signed an open letter appealing to the medical community and governing bodies to recognize the potential risk of airborne transmission. That same month (by coincidence, not as a result of the letter), WHO released a new scientific brief on transmission of SARS-CoV-2 that stated:
“Short-range aerosol transmission, particularly in specific indoor locations, such as crowded and inadequately ventilated spaces over a prolonged period of time with infected persons cannot be ruled out.”
Epidemiologist Bill Hanage interpreted WHO's statement to mean: "While it is reasonable to think it can happen, there's not consistent evidence that it is happening often." In other words, WHO believed that spreading via aerosols was rare.
Research
As Hanage told The New York Times, WHO staff were looking for proof that would falsify their existing beliefs: "They are still challenged by the absence of evidence, and the difficulty of proving a negative."
MORE FOR YOU
Why Huawei’s New Update Is Seriously Bad News For Android Users
WhatsApp Users Suddenly Get This Surprise New Boost From Facebook
WHO Was Wrong About Coronavirus Being Airborne, But Why?
Virologist Julian Tang added that "WHO is being overly cautious and shortsighted unnecessarily." He also criticized its approach to avoiding hazards: "By recognizing aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and recommending improved ventilation facilities to be upgraded or installed, you can improve the health of people."
According to primary healthcare expert Trish Greenhalgh, there was another problem — members of WHO's scientific committee didn't agree on how to interpret the data: "The push-pull of that committee is palpable. As everyone knows, if you ask a committee to design a horse, you get a camel."
WHO's scientific briefs aren't official guidance, and so its reluctance to recognize that Coronavirus is airborne created a bigger issue: a lack of health advice.
The importance of providing the public with information is highlighted by a search for 'Coronavirus transmission' because the top result is a Q&A section on WHO's website — which until recently didn't acknowledge the contribution of aerosols.
On 30 April 2021, almost 10 months after WHO said it would review the research on airborne transmission, it finally updated its Q&A page with the following statement:
“Current evidence suggests that the virus spreads mainly between people who are in close contact with each other, typically within 1 metre (short-range). A person can be infected when aerosols or droplets containing the virus are inhaled or come directly into contact with the eyes, nose, or mouth. The virus can also spread in poorly ventilated and/or crowded indoor settings, where people tend to spend longer periods of time. This is because aerosols remain suspended in the air or travel farther than 1 metre (long-range).”
WHO's statement is too little, too late.
Reasons
Why has the World Health Organization been so slow to offer public health guidance?
As I explained in my article '4 Reasons Why WHO Won't Admit Coronavirus Is Airborne', there are four (not mutually exclusive) explanations for its reluctant response.
For historical reasons, WHO's staff assume that virus-laden droplets must spread over short distances, for instance, which (as Hanage pointed out) then leads to a need for scientific evidence to disprove that assumption.
WHO is also hampered by sociopolitical factors and how its decisions might be perceived by the public or its various stakeholders — including the countries that fund its activities.
But the most likely explanation for WHO's slow progress is simply bureaucracy. The organization decided that its own staff should review all the evidence for airborne transmission. According to Soumya Swaminathan, WHO's chief scientist, they were carefully reviewing 500 studies every day.
WHO made a rod for its own back.
A cynic would say that its scientists created busy-work to justify their jobs, as they could have instead consulted some of the 239 researchers who had signed the letter on airborne transmission. Why did WHO's scientists believe they understood more about aerosols than aerosol experts?
Regardless of the reason, WHO positioned itself as the sole authority that could judge the research. In doing so, it put its personal beliefs on what constitutes scientific rigor over the need for health guidance when speed was of the essence.
Since mid-2020, about 2.7 million people have died of Covid. While it's obviously unfair to pin that figure on WHO, we should consider how many deaths could have been prevented if it had listened to researchers who are specialists in their field.
WHO failed to consider that practical advice — to recommend that the public use caution and wear face masks to block airborne droplets — has no major downsides when compared to the alternative, which is to potentially allow people to spread Covid.
It's better to be safe than sorry.
Covid spread through hotel ventilation systems.
stuff.co.nz
Covid-19: Ventilation blamed for coronavirus spread in hospitals, hotels, experts say
Aisha Dow20:32, Dec 21 2020FacebookTwitterWhatsAppRedditEmailComments0
5-7 minutes
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Pavel Golovkin/AP
Investigations at Melbourne hospitals found it is common for the air in rooms of sick patients to be funnelled into busy corridors, experts warn hotel ventilation systems pose a greater risk. (File photo)
Investigators at Melbourne hospitals have found it is common for air in rooms of sick patients to be funnelled into busy corridors, with poor ventilation and airflow issues the likely cause of coronavirus cases during Victoria's second wave.
Multiple teams of engineers have spent months analysing the airflow in medical wards and treatment rooms after nurses and other health workers began to catch the virus in their hundreds.
Tests that used smoke to measure where air was travelling detected air from patients’ rooms circulating at nurses' stations.
Ongoing University of Melbourne tests of the airflow in wards at the Royal Melbourne, Footscray and Sunshine hospitals found it is “ubiquitous” to have air travelling from hospital rooms out to busy corridors, in all but a limited number of dedicated negative-pressure rooms.
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Sydney's COVID-19 cluster grows
Australian states and territories on Friday begun imposing border restrictions after 28 COVID-19 cases were detected from a cluster on Sydney's northern beaches, with fears the number of infections will rise.
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The findings have implications for hotel quarantine, with a lead researcher warning hotel ventilation systems were even more likely to spread Covid-19.
“From an infection-control point of view, the ventilation in hotels is very poor,” said Professor Jason Monty, the University of Melbourne’s head of mechanical engineering.
“You would have never expected that their ventilation systems would be up to scratch for reducing airborne transmission. So why they were chosen, considering this possible risk, I find quite extraordinary.”
Monty is part of a team that has spent months analysing airflow in medical wards in Victoria, after he was called on to assist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital at the beginning of a major outbreak that would infect hundreds of staff.
“When we’re talking about virus in the air, you can imagine it’s quite dangerous to have it all coming out of rooms and into a packed corridor,” he said.
Monty said one way to check ventilation was to measure the number of times each hour the air in a room was replaced; some rooms didn’t meet the hospital standard of six air changes per hour.
Epidemiologist Mary-Louise McLaws, an adviser to the World Health Organisation, said hotels had lower rates of air exchange in comparison to hospitals and called for travellers from risky countries to be moved out of high-rise city hotels.
“Often, the air into the bathroom is ventilated into the bedroom area. It doesn’t get refreshed. It’s very stale air,” she said.
"People coming back from the northern hemisphere [need] to be moved into the regional areas or to the Howard Springs international quarantine station [in Darwin]."
A hospital source from Western Health said the health service had conducted a separate engineering assessment of ventilation and airflow that had resulted in a number of changes, including the installation of portable filters.
Some patients at Sunshine and Footscray hospitals were also placed in a plastic hood designed by the University of Melbourne and Western Health, and the invention is thought to have reduced coronavirus infections in nurses working in intensive care.
Dr Marion Kainer, head of infectious diseases at Western Health, said it would be ideal to keep all patients with suspected coronavirus in a negative-pressure room, but it wasn’t always possible because there was a very limited number of them available.
While it is now broadly accepted that Covid-19 can spread through the air on small particles, debate continues about how much of a risk it poses compared to other modes of transmission.
The World Health Organisation states the virus mainly spreads through close contact with an infected person, when somebody sneezes and coughs, for example. But it and other influential medical groups also accept there is a risk of aerosol transmission, “particularly in indoor, crowded and inadequately ventilated spaces”.
A coronavirus cluster linked to an Adelaide hot hotel was initially blamed on the virus being picked up from a surface, but South Australian authorities revealed this week that poor ventilation in a corridor may have been the real cause after police reviewed hours of CCTV footage and found no significant infection-control breaches.
A Health Department spokesman said Victorian hospitals had already implemented a range of changes to their buildings over the last six months, in response to the pandemic.
“These include building and commissioning new wards for coronavirus patients, installing additional liquid oxygen supplies for clinical ventilation and installation of negative pressure zones to separate Covid and non-Covid patients, as well as modification of heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems to manage airflows within facilities.”
Sydney Morning Herald
Covid spread through hotel ventilation systems.