COVID-19 is airborne. Why is this so controversial?

It was mid-December when a few of Ontario’s high medical doctors publicly advised reporters that COVID-19 is airborne.

For almost two years public well being officers in Canada have shied away from utilizing that time period to explain how the novel coronavirus is unfold. As an alternative, the main focus has been on stopping the unfold of the virus by way of droplets.

All through 2021, quite a few well being businesses and practitioners have called on public well being officers to acknowledge that COVID-19 can be unfold by aerosols, which might stay within the air and journey a brief distance in unventilated areas. One after the other, provinces and native public well being items started to publicly acknowledge that, in gentle of the extremely transmissible Omicron variant, that aerosols are possible taking part in an element in how the illness spreads.

This reality led to Ontario’s Science Advisory Desk advising folks to ditch single layer material masks for higher-grade private protecting gear.

In Life Unmasked’s first episode of 2022, the group speaks with two specialists to seek out out what it truly means for a illness to be airborne.

Raymond Tellier, a medical microbiologist and affiliate professor at McGill College, joins the group to run by means of the science behind droplets versus aerosols whereas Colleen Derkatch, an affiliate professor of rhetoric at Ryerson College, discusses why officers might have been hesitant to make use of the time period “airborne” sooner than vital.

Life Unmasked airs first on the iHeart app each Tuesday morning earlier than turning into accessible on different streaming platforms. If in case you have questions for the podcast group, or an concept for an episode, please electronic mail lifeunmasked@bellmedia.ca.