Virus advisory body cops a spray from infectious diseases experts

Several leading Australian infectious diseases experts are urging the federal government to sack its advisory body on COVID-19.

In recent days, both the WHO and the US Centres for Disease Control have updated their guidelines on Covid-19.

Several leading Australian infectious diseases experts are urging the federal government to sack its advisory body on COVID-19, saying the group is ignoring new global health advice about the dangers of airborne transmission of the virus.

In recent days, both the World Health Organisation and the US Centres for Disease Control have updated their guidelines to emphasise that breathing in air with small particles of the virus when people are within 1.8m is a common form of transmission.

The virus can spread even when people are “far apart” or have been in the same enclosed spaced for more than a few minutes, although this is uncommon, the revised CDC guidelines say.

Australia’s Infection Control Expert Group, which advises the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee, said it had no plans to change its advice which in the past has downplayed aerosol transmission.

This includes allowing frontline medical staff and hotel quarantine workers to wear surgical masks with protective eye wear when dealing with COVID-19 cases rather than fitted N95 masks.

Infectious diseases expert Michelle Ananda-Raja said that position was untenable and called upon the group to resign. “I think there needs to be some explanation as to why the infection control expert group are unwilling to change their advice now that the WHO and the CDC have clearly acknowledged aerosol spread of this infection,” she said.

“It just really circles back to this deep-seated ideology or dogma, and an unwillingness to adapt with the evidence. They’re clinging on for dear life against this tide which has turned. If they are unable or unwilling to move with the evidence, they should all resign because they are now an impediment to our national security and our economic recovery. This has gone beyond healthcare; this has major implications to how we live and work into the future because COVID isn’t going to go away overnight,” Dr Ananda-Raja said.

Epidemiologist Mike Toole, from the Burnet Institute, said the high number of COVID-19 leaks from hotel quarantine — 18 around the country since November — amounted to negligence, and that ICEG was responsible.

“Last year, all the states and territories instituted measures to prevent transmission by large droplets that fall to the ground within 1.5m. What that didn’t do was protect against airborne transmission, where the virus travels in small particles and can travel up to 15m, and that’s been proved in study after study,” Professor Toole said.

In one study of an outbreak at a church in western Sydney, an infected member of the choir spread the virus to other members of the congregation who were up to 14m away from him. “The authors quite rightly concluded — and the CDC editors agreed — that the only way those people could have got infected was through airborne transmission,” Professor Toole said.

It was vital all hotel quarantine workers wore N95 masks while in lobbies, corridors and other communal areas, he said, “because the hotel corridors now are our international borders”.

Professor Toole said current ICEG members should be replaced. “Certain people, particularly those that have a high media profile, have dug in to protect what they believed before to be true. Now a good scientist, of course, always has an open mind,” he said.

Members of the ICEG on Sunday rejected calls to change the current advice or to resign.

Infectious diseases physician Peter Collignon, from the Australian National University said the CDC advice had not changed significantly. “Nobody’s said aerosols may not perhaps spread COVID — it’s just that the predominant route is through droplets,” Professor Collignon said.

“These really small particles, yes, they can transmit it but it’s uncommon, while the large particles is common.”