COVID UPDATE 8/25 8:13AM PST

A fascinating article in TIME Magazine was just published and describes in detail the issue of mounting evidence of "aerosol transmission" of COVID-19.

According to the article, it was written by Jose-Luis Jimenez.

"Jimenez is a Professor of Chemistry and a Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado-Boulder. He is a highly cited researcher and a Fellow of the American Association for Aerosol Research and the American Geophysical Union."

Several interesting excerpts from the article are below:

"It is critical to have a clear physical description of the ways in which COVID-19 is transmitted, so that individuals and institutions are able to visualize it and will understand how to protect themselves. Contrary to public health messaging, I, together with many other scientists, believe that a substantial share of COVID-19 cases are the result of transmission through aerosols. The evidence in favor of aerosols is stronger than that for any other pathway, and officials need to be more aggressive in expressing this reality if we want to get the pandemic under control."

“Aerosol” (sometimes referred to as “airborne”) transmission is similar to droplet transmission, except that the bits of fluid are so small that they can linger in the air for minutes to hours. To understand the scale of aerosols, the diameter of a human hair is about 80 microns, and aerosols smaller than about 50 microns can float in the air long enough to be inhaled. SARS-CoV-2 is only 0.1 microns in diameter, so there is room for plenty of viruses in aerosols."

"In a fast-moving viral pandemic, scientific understanding will inevitably change as research catches up to the speed at which the virus spreads. However, it seems clear that aerosols are more important when it comes to transmitting COVID-19 than we thought six months ago—and certainly more important than public health officials are currently making them out to be. The WHO and CDC, among others, must begin communicating the science suggesting aerosol spread of COVID-19—and the risk reduction strategies necessary as a result. If not, we hamper our ability to counter the growing health consequences and increasing death toll of COVID-19."

Click here to read the full article in TIME Magazine.

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