CDC Reverses Guidance, Says Coronavirus Can Spread Beyond 6 Feet

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The Centers for Disease Control on Monday revised guidance on the ability of the coronavirus to travel by air, saying in new guidelines that it can in traverse distances of more than six feet under certain circumstances.

“Today’s update acknowledges the existence of some published reports showing limited, uncommon circumstances where people with COVID-19 infected others who were more than 6 feet away or shortly after the COVID-19-positive person left an area,” the agency said in a press release. “In these instances, transmission occurred in poorly ventilated and enclosed spaces that often involved activities that caused heavier breathing, like singing or exercise. Such environments and activities may contribute to the buildup of virus-carrying particles.”

The revision comes after just weeks after the CDC posted similar guidance in September before removing it three days later, stating that it had inadvertently published a draft. That version included restaurants as an example of a setting where the virus could travel for more than six feet. That illustration was not included in the latest version.

The guidance largely confirms what scientists have argued. One study over the summer showed the virus traveling as far as 26 feet in a cold slaughterhouse in Germany, leading approximately 1,500 workers to become infected.

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases chief Dr. Anthony Fauci said in a CNN interview shortly after the CDC’s September incident that he agreed the virus acted as an aerosol. “There have been some case reports in the literature of situations, for example, in restaurants where it looks like it almost had to be an aerosol spread,” Fauci said. Whether or not that’s 3 percent, 5 percent, 10 percent of the spread, we don’t know.

“Make an assumption that some component of it is aerosol and act accordingly,” he added.

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