The Nigerian Center for Disease Control has said that the novel COVID-19 can now be transmitted to persons through the atmosphere.
This was revealed by the Director-General, Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, during the presidential task force briefing on July 13.
“Understanding the mode of transmission of any new virus is very critical for defining response strategy, he said.
“For COVID-19 from the very beginning, our understanding based on other coronaviruses spread was primarily through droplets, excretion from the respiratory tract that can’t stay on the air but ultimately fall to the ground after a few minutes, he continued.
“However, as we have studied transmission, we saw increasing evidence from clusters of infection that droplets transmission does not seem to be enough to explain the clusters that we are seeing.
“Over the past few weeks, increasing evidence has emerged that in addition to droplet infection, we cannot rule out that airborne transmission is also possible as a mode of transmission of COVID-19, and WHO has updated its guidelines on this saying exactly the same thing,” Ihekweazu said.
He said that the disease has a greater opportunity to be transmitted from persons to persons indoors than outdoor.
He said:
“Indoor activities are riskier than outdoor activities especially when there are many people in a room, when they don’t adhere to distancing and when people don’t wear masks. “This means we have to strengthen further the avoidance of mass gatherings or gatherings of any nature in small spaces.
“So we have to pay attention to ventilation, distancing, stay outside as preferred to inside, continue to wash your hands, and absolutely wear a mask whenever we are outside the home.
Speaking of adaptation of new guidelines Ihechekwa said; “It is not shameful to change your guidelines from week to week as new evidence emerges. “That is what we are committed to doing. “To guide the response by our leaders, to give them the best evidence possible to make the very hard decisions that we need to make collectively as we learn to live with this outbreak as safely as possible over the months to come,” the NDDC boss said.
