Coronavirus Could Be Transmitted Through Air - NCDC

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) reveals a chilling revelation about the transmission of coronavirus, saying that there is a possibility of the virus being airborne.

This was disclosed by the Director-General of the health agency, Chikwe Ihekweazu, on Monday, during a briefing of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19.

Chikwe, explaining how the virus could ride on air, said that a "susceptible" individual could inhale "aerosol" and, if the aerosols carries the virus in "sufficient quantity," it could cause an infection.

He said, “A susceptible person could inhale aerosols, and could become infected if the aerosols contain the virus in sufficient quantity to cause infection within the recipient.

“However, the proportion of exhaled droplet nuclei or of respiratory droplets that evaporate to generate aerosols, and the infectious dose of viable SARS-CoV-2 required to cause infection in another person are not known, but it has been studied for other respiratory viruses.

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“Understanding the modes of transmission of any new virus is very critical for defining response strategies. For COVID-19, from the very beginning, our understanding based on other coronaviruses was spread primarily through droplets.

“Droplets are excretions from the respiratory tracts that can’t stay on in the air. They ultimately fall to the ground after a few minutes. However, as we have studied transmission, studied clusters of these infections, we saw increasing evidence from clusters of infections. Clusters transmissions did not seem to be enough to explain the clusters that we are seeing.

“Diseases that are commonly spread by what we call airborne infection are things like measles and influenza that can be suspended in the air and transmit over longer distances.

“Over the past few weeks, increasing evidence has emerged that in addition to droplet infections, we cannot rule out that airborne transmission is also possible as a mode of transmission of COVID-19.”