If until now the World Health Organization explained that the mask was not necessary for healthy people, unless they were in contact with sick people, this may no longer be the case very soon. Indeed, American scientists argue that Covid-19 can be transmitted simply when people speak…and breathe.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases and adviser to Donald Trump on the outbreak, spoke to Fox News on Friday about reports indicating that “the virus can actually be transmitted when people just talk, rather than just when they sneeze or cough .
Before that, in a letter to the White House that Donald Trump received last Wednesday, the American Academies of Sciences cited four studies that tipped the scales in favor of transmission of the virus through the air exhaled by people, and not only by the droplets and sputters projected during a sneeze directly on the face of other people or on surfaces.
Researchers at the University of Nebraska have indeed found portions of the virus's genetic code (RNA) in the air of rooms where patients were isolated, while other researchers in Wuhan have taken samples of air in various hospital rooms and discovered high concentrations of the novel coronavirus.
However, if the virus is actually present in the breath, it is not yet known whether this represents an important route of transmission quantitatively.
But airborne transmission would provide a long-sought explanation for the apparent high contagiousness of the virus responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic, since it appears that people infected but without symptoms are responsible for a large part of the contagion, at their insu.
As a reminder, in France, the Academy of Medicine on Friday recommended the compulsory wearing of a mask, as a "logical addition to barrier measures" .
