"Strong Evidence" Covid Predominantly Spreads Through Air: Lancet Study

By contrast, the team found little to no evidence that the virus spreads easily via large droplets, which fall quickly through the air and contaminate surfaces.

A new assessment in the medical journal Lancet has found "consistent, strong evidence" that the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, is predominantly transmitted through the air. Therefore, public health measures that fail to treat the virus as predominantly airborne leave people unprotected and allow the virus to spread, according to six experts from the UK, USA and Canada, including Jose-Luis Jimenez, a chemist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and the University of Colorado Boulder. "The evidence supporting airborne transmission is overwhelming, and evidence supporting large droplet transmission is almost non-existent," Jimenez said. "It is urgent that the World Health Organization and other public health agencies adapt their description of transmission to the scientific evidence so that the focus of mitigation is put on reducing airborne transmission." The team of experts, led by the University of Oxford''s Trish Greenhalgh, reviewed published research and identified 10 lines of evidence to support the predominance of the airborne route.