The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its guidance on Monday, saying the novel coronavirus can be spread between people beyond 6 feet of distance under certain conditions.
Monday’s updated guidance is the latest in a series of frequent changes to COVID-19 guidelines. About three weeks ago, the CDC posted guidance that the virus could spread through “respiratory droplets or small particles, such as those in aerosols, produced when an infected person coughs, sneezes, sings, talks, or breathes.” The CDC removed that guidance just days later on Sept. 21, saying it had been “posted in error.”
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The updated guidelines posted Monday say, “There is evidence that under certain conditions, people with COVID-19 seem to have infected others who were more than 6 feet away… These transmissions occurred within enclosed spaces that had inadequate ventilation. Sometimes the infected person was breathing heavily, for example while singing or exercising.”
“Under these circumstances,” the CDC says, “scientists believe that the amount of infectious smaller droplet 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.”
The CDC also stresses that tiny particles hanging in the air are not the main way the coronavirus is known to spread.
“Available data indicate that it is much more common for the virus that causes COVID-19 to spread through close contact with a person who has COVID-19 than through airborne transmission,” the guidance adds.
Frequent policy reversals from the CDC have fomented fears that politics are driving the agency’s response to the pandemic.
