According to a news report on Tuesday, the latest research suggests that people should keep the six feet distance from each other at public places to avoid spreading COVID-19. Whereas, measures such as social distancing encourage individuals to whether stay home or, in case of emergency, to go out in public, must assure to keep a safe distance between each other. According to USA Today, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology advises a suitable safe distance is actually twenty-seven feet.
This story was denounced by Dr. Fauci today as an abnormal situation. He said a huge, uncovered sneeze or cough is the only way it could travel that far.
Coronavirus: Social distancing gap should be greatly increased, MIT researcher sayshttps://t.co/ztUyQolPAl
— MsConsuelo (@consueloyd) April 1, 2020
Though the United States National Institutes of Health infectious diseases top expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci called the MIT research “awfully misleading,” the New York Post stated. Fauci, the senior member of a White House task force, says that the report annoys him because it was misleading and unauthentic. An MIT associate professor, Dr. Lydia Bourouriba, recommended in her research that the dynamics of sneezes and coughs found these exhalations creates gaseous clouds. And these clouds have the ability to travel up to twenty-seven feet.
Research-based on 1930s model of disease transmission
The journal of the American Medical Association published the research, which suggests the measures regarding social distancing based on a model of disease transmission developed back in the 1930s. In the study published on 26th March, Bourouiba wrote that executing public health suggestions based on the older models may limit the success of the proposed interventions. However, during the White House news briefing on Tuesday, Fauci noted that it would take a too much strong, energetic, achoo sneeze for droplets even to come near to traveling such a distance.
The respected doctor even pretends a strong sneeze on the stage to show a demo, what it would take to drive the droplets that far. Fauci explained, if you go way back and go, sneeze, at the same time she performed the same thing, then she said, you might get twenty-seven feet. According to the report of the World Health Organization (WHO), respiratory infections transmitted in the form of different-sized droplets, just like in the case of coronavirus, outspread. Droplets spread when someone sneezes or coughs into the air – WHO.
Stop wearing Face Masks if you’re healthy – WHO
Droplet size Classification System
William F. Wells, the expert of Tuberculosis transmission in the 1930s, categorized those droplets as small and large, the Bourouiba research told. According to research, the large droplets settle more rapidly, while the small droplets, known as aerosols, evaporate and form residual particulates made of dry material from the actual drops. Bourouiba wrote that strategies about infection control established based on whether a respirational infectious disease transmitted primarily through small or large droplets.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization base their suggestions on that droplet size classification system, but that might describe the speedy transmission of COVID-19 across the world, according to Bourouiba. Her research reveals coughs and sneezes consist of gas clouds that are responsible for carrying clusters of droplets. Under these circumstances, the droplet’s lifetime significantly extended by a factor of over one thousand from a fraction of a second to minutes.
The University of Washington School of Medicine’s infectious disease professor, Dr. Paul Pottinger, believes if the research of Bourouiba proved correct, more individuals would become sick from the virus, USA Today reported. If it really transmits very efficiently by traveling through the air, then everybody would infect it. In case of a 27-feet radius as a high risk to anybody, it might be a completely different debate. However, the WHO distinguishes it in the context of COVID-19 as the airborne may spread in some particular situations and settings in which procedures or support handling that produce aerosols.
The research of Bourouiba also quotes a 2020 report from China showing coronavirus particles found in ventilation systems of hospital above rooms where coronavirus patients being treated. Agencies should be more careful while considering social distancing measures, even if the scientific community cannot settle on an exact travel distance for the COVID-19.
