Health groups propose new terminology for pathogens that spread through the air
After a consensus-building process among many health organizations, the World Health Organization is proposing that stakeholders use the term “infectious respiratory particles” in the future, “moving away from a strict dichotomy of particle sizes and accepting that smaller IRPs can be transmitted at both short-and long-range depending on several influencing factors,” according to a new WHO report.
According to the report, during the pandemic, the terms ‘airborne’, ‘airborne transmission’ and ‘aerosol transmission’ were used in different ways in different disciplines, which could have led to misleading information and confusion about how pathogens are transmitted.
The report brought together viewpoints from experts in various disciplines with the goal of seeking consensus regarding the terminology used to describe the transmission of pathogens through the air that might cause infections in humans, aiming to create terminology that could be understood and accepted by different technical disciplines.
Read more: World Health Organization
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