Key points:
- Scientists who pushed authorities to recognize the airborne transmission of COVID-19 have shared their perspective on that critical time.
- They say scientific fact was not timely adopted in public health decision-making, causing loss of life.
- The article gives four recommendations on how to avoid these mistakes in future pandemics.
The international group of scientists who successfully lobbied the World Health Organisation to recognize the airborne transmission of COVID-19 have published four key steps needed to avoid similar critical mistakes in the future.
The viewpoint article, published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, is written by 33 researchers from more than 10 countries, and details the struggle of the large group of experts to have authorities recognize the science of airborne transmission of the virus.
In April 2020, Lidia Morawska, a professor at Queensland University of Technology, led a group of almost 240 international experts in warning authorities on the reality of COVID-19 transmission, at a time when the World Health Organisation declared “COVID-19 is NOT airborne.” It was only in July 2020 that WHO accepted and acknowledged the evidence of airborne transmission.
“Time was of the essence as the pandemic was intensifying and people were dying,” the article reads. “We think this account should be made public to serve as a warning about what happens when scientific evidence is rejected in favor of beliefs that have become dogma without a firm evidence base. It is a tragic situation for our society that scientific fact is not timely adopted in public health decision-making.”
The article has four recommendations on how society can do better in future pandemics:
- Multidisciplinary mechanisms should be created by which decision makers should be accountable for using or rejecting science, in a transparent and timely manner.
- Decision makers should use the best available science and not contort the science in order to fit a decision that may hinge on multiple factors.
- Decision makers should acknowledge scientific realities and explain how they, along with numerous other factors, drive policy. Such transparency would build public trust.
- Concentrated effort should be made to use the massive body of data and the evidence amassed during the COVID-19 pandemic to assess the protective impact of control measures against the airborne transmission of the virus, should they have been implemented since the beginning of the pandemic.
Information provided by Queensland University of Technology.