Scientists working in the US government have estimated that the emerging coronavirus will inevitably spread between people when they speak or breathe. Consequently, the authorities have officially recommended that Americans cover their faces when they leave their homes to contribute to a stronger containment of the epidemic.
The measure was announced by US President Donald Trump on Friday evening, stressing that the issue is only a recommendation and not mandatory. Health authorities are asking residents to cover their faces with hand-made masks and scarves or a head scarf, with the aim of allocating medical masks to health teams working in disease control, as a result of the lack of this equipment.
In New York, the mayor had previously asked residents to cover their faces when leaving the house. Since Friday, half of Manhattan's infantrymen have applied this advice.
Anthony Fuchi, director of the Institute of Infectious Diseases, a member of the White House staff on the emerging Corona virus, who meets an hour daily with Trump, told Fox News about data indicating that “the virus can actually pass between people who are just talking, and not only when They cough or sneeze. ”
Data indicating the virus’s anaerobic transmission provides a long-sought-for explanation of the ability of the virus that causes Covid-19 to spread rapidly, at a time when infected, but without symptoms, people who make up perhaps a quarter of all infected people, are responsible for transmitting the infection.
Several studies have shown that people without symptoms transmitted infection to people close to them in the church or choir, or during a singing lesson and in nursing homes.
The American Academy of Sciences said in a message addressed to the White House on Wednesday, four studies, that the virus is transmitted through the air from the breathing of individuals, and not only through the drops caused by coughing or sneezing near one of them.
"The current research work available supports the possibility that the SARS-Covid-2 virus is transmissible through vital air molecules generated directly from the exhalation of patients," wrote Harvey Weinberg, chair of the Emerging Infectious Diseases Committee.