Where’s the evidence Dr Nabarro? Statement by Doctors in Unite (26 January 2023)

Summary

Dr Nabarro’s recent comment made on Independent Sage 2 December, that Covid-19 is primarily a droplet-borne infection, flies in the face of overwhelming international scientific consensus that the pandemic is driven by airborne transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Despite airborne transmission being accepted as the dominant mode of spread in almost every other arena, within official infection prevention and control (IPC) bodies in the World Health Organization (WHO) and many national authorities including the UK, there is denial or minimising of airborne spread, and continuing adherence to the droplet theory of transmission. This has meant rejection of airborne mitigations within healthcare, with profound consequences for the lives and health of healthcare workers, as well as for patients in hospitals and care homes.

It is now clear that the IPC authorities will not be persuaded, no matter how much evidence is presented to them that SARS-CoV-2 is primarily airborne, and that efforts by aerosol scientists, engineers and health experts to provide further evidence of this, are futile. 

This statement from Doctors in Unite explores these issues in detail, and highlights the disastrous record of droplet-only precautions in our hospitals and care homes. It also asks why the critically important “precautionary principle” was not applied throughout healthcare from the outset, to keep workers and patients safe, while the mode of transmission of the virus was being fully elucidated, despite this being official WHO policy.