CDC: COVID-19 transmission can extend over six feet

• An updated COVID-19 guideline from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) wrote that people can get infected even with a distance of over six feet from an infected person.
• These “limited and uncommon” situations are noted to have occurred in confined areas with inadequate ventilation.
• The coronavirus, as believed by scientists, comes in smaller droplets that become concentrated enough to be transmitted through the air.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cited in its newly revised coronavirus guidelines on Monday that the virus can linger in the air and spread to other people at a distance beyond six feet.

According to the agency’s website, there is sufficient evidence that COVID-19, in the form of small droplets, can remain in the air from minutes to hours, potentially infecting others standing more than six feet away. Such transmissions were observed to have taken place in enclosed spaces with poor ventilation where the infected person was either breathing heavily, singing, or talking.

The agency said that under these particular circumstances, scientists think that “the amount of infectious smaller droplets and particles produced by the people with COVID-19 became concentrated enough to spread the virus to other people.”

“The people who were infected were in the same space during the same time or shortly after the person with COVID-19 had left,” noted the site. 

Furthermore, the CDC said that based on current science, they continue to believe that the longer and closer an uninfected person stays with a person with COVID-19, the more chances they contract the virus. 

“Today’s update acknowledges the existence of some published reports showing limited, uncommon circumstances where people with COVID-19 infected others who were more than 6 feet away or shortly after the COVID-19-positive person left an area,” said the agency in a statement.

The recognition comes after similar guidance was posted last month only to be pulled out afterward.

At the time, a CDC spokesman told the Wall Street Journal that an error was committed when the unapproved draft of proposed changes to these recommendations was published in the agency’s official website.

Source: New York Post