Coronavirus FAQs: Why Can’t The CDC Make Up Its Mind About Airborne Transmission?

Shanti Hands for NPR

Each week we answer some of your pressing questions about the coronavirus and how to stay safe. Email us your questions at [email protected] with the subject line: “Weekly Coronavirus Questions.”

What is up CDC? First you say airborne transmission is a thing. Then you rolled it back. So … is this something I should be worried about?

Last Friday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention briefly became the first major public health agency in the world to say the coronavirus could be frequently spreading through the air. A page on the CDC website on “How COVID-19 Spreads” described the coronavirus as spreading “most commonly” through “respiratory or small particles, such as those in aerosols,” which are tiny airborne particles expelled from people’s noses and mouths when they speak, sing, cough or breathe — and which can remain suspended in the air and travel further than six feet.