Thread by @DoctorsInUnite

doctorsinunite.com/2023/01/26/whe…

Two months ago a senior WHO official repeated what WHO and IPC have been saying throughout the pandemic: Covid-19 is spread by droplets.

They have never produced any evidence for this.
Time to do so. @WHO @davidnabarro

Summary 🧵below

2/ At the 2 Dec 2022 Independent SAGE briefing, Dr David Nabarro, WHO Special Envoy on Covid-19, said “…Covid is primarily, primarily, a droplet-borne infection, it may be airborne in certain circumstances, but we still in WHO contexts say its primarily droplet-borne..”

3/

4/ This flies in the face of overwhelming international scientific consensus that the pandemic is driven by airborne transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, summarised in the recent Delphi consensus statement
nature.com/articles/s4158…

5/ Despite airborne transmission being accepted as the dominant mode of spread in almost every other arena, within official Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) bodies in the WHO and many national authorities including the UK, there is denial or minimising of airborne…

6/ spread and continuing adherence to the droplet theory of transmission. This has meant rejection of airborne mitigations within healthcare, with devastating consequences for the lives and health of many healthcare workers and patients in hospitals and care homes.

7/ When experts outside of WHO IPC have looked for the evidence, they have found none.

https://twitter.com/EvonneTCurran/status/1581271048682868738

and

https://twitter.com/EvonneTCurran/status/1586260435090612224

and

https://twitter.com/jljcolorado/status/1587145744598765568

8/ There is also no evidence that other plank of ICP policy, so-called "AGPs", poses any additional risk. The Lancet said they are irrelevant.
thelancet.com/journals/d/art…

9/ The ongoing denial of airborne transmission and adherence to unevidenced droplet spread in healthcare, has been calamitous.
Over 2,100 health and social care workers died from Covid-19 in the first two years of the pandemic

ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati…

10/ Almost 200,000 NHS workers have long Covid. hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2022-11-…

11/ Nearly 40,000 residents of care homes died from Covid-19 in the first year of the pandemic
cqc.org.uk/publications/m…

12/ At least 11,600 patients died of Covid-19 they caught in hospital up until November 2021
telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/11/0…

13/ Rates of hospital acquired Covid-19 infection have been high for most of the pandemic, reaching 36% in Dec 2022. This is an infection control disaster – the average rate of hospital acquired infections for other pathogens is around 6%.

https://twitter.com/LawtonTri/status/1605894547883573250

14/ OECD rates of hospital acquired infections
oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/health_g…

15/ It is now clear that the IPC authorities will not be persuaded, no matter how much evidence is presented to them that SARS-CoV-2 is primarily airborne. Efforts by aerosol scientists, engineers and health experts to provide further evidence are futile.

16/ We suggest therefore it is time to change tactics, and to demand from IPC within WHO, from senior WHO officials like Dr Nabarro and national IPC bodies, the evidence they have for droplet transmission.

17/ Throughout the pandemic, all we have had are bald assertions that Covid-19 is droplet spread, without any evidence. It is remarkable that no such evidence has been provided for the putative mode of spread for a global pandemic by official infection control authorities.

18/ One of the most important lessons of the pandemic has been the need for statements, policies and practice to be based on robust, peer-reviewed evidence. Time to provide it.

19/ Our statement explores these issues in detail, and asks why the critically important “precautionary principle” was not applied throughout healthcare from the outset. This would have kept workers and patients safe while the mode of spread was being fully investigated.

20/ Official WHO policy for the management of pandemics makes clear that precautions against all modes of spread, including airborne, are required for new pathogens. WHO and IPC have still not advocated the precautionary principle for SARS-CoV-2. who.int/publications/i… .

21/ The pandemic is accelerating globally, with worrying new variants continuing to emerge. We cannot afford any longer denial and obfuscation on the main route of transmission of the virus from the global authority on pandemic management.

22/ Recognising and widely publicising the correct (i.e. scientifically evidenced) route of spread of the virus is critical to our adopting the appropriate measures to limit spread.
It is time for WHO and IPC bodies to produce a statement with the evidence for droplet spread..

23/ If they cannot, they should officially abandon droplet theory and embrace airborne spread. They cannot continue to do neither in the face of the ongoing devastation wrought by this virus across the globe.

24/ We have the tools to clean indoor air, the engineers and the aerosol scientists have been telling us this for 3 years now. When we do this, we will stop this pandemic.

25/ Full statement here: doctorsinunite.com/2023/01/26/whe…

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