This summer, as COVID-19 continued its spread across the U.S., the National Academies brought together engineers, virologists, public health experts, and others for a meeting to dive into the rapidly evolving science of COVID-19 airborne transmission. Can the virus be transmitted by speaking or breathing? How long do particles in the air stay infectious? And how far can they travel? What questions have we yet to ask?
To date over 15,000 people have watched the virtual two-day workshop, and last week, the National Academies published a summary of the session, providing a valuable snapshot for the scientific community of what is being learned about COVID-19 and airborne transmission.
As a member of the Academies’ Environmental Health Matters Initiative steering committee, Jonathan Samet, a pulmonary physician and epidemiologist who serves as dean of the Colorado School of Public Health, helped plan the workshop. Samet answered questions about the impact of the event, and how the research community can use the new summary in their ongoing, urgent research into COVID-19.
This article originally appeared on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine website.