Airborne

It’s been five years since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared an outbreak involving a new virus called COVID-19. The WHO declared the end of the “public health emergency” on May 5, 2023, with a few deaths and infections still regularly reported and posted on the WHO website. In February 2025, the WHO reported 2,800 deaths.

Mass media around the world did report on the fifth anniversary, but these were few and far between, including articles noting how easily the world had forgotten COVID, and how ill-prepared we are for the next pandemic, which scientists feel is a matter of “when” rather than “if.”

Carl Zimmer, one of The New York Times’ best science writers, will be launching a book “Air-Borne: The Hidden History of The Life We Breathe” this month and some international newspapers have been picking up on some of the concerns he is raising about continuing low public awareness of airborne diseases, even among health professionals. Understanding airborne diseases will be a key to pandemic preparedness.

But didn’t everyone know it was airborne, which was why we were told to wear face masks?

Not exactly. Many of those untold stories relate to what almost seems to have been a denial of the airborne nature of the COVID virus. Among public health professionals, we do know that during the pandemic, the WHO itself took a year and a half to admit the virus was airborne.

Again, remember it was in March 2020, when the WHO declared a COVID outbreak. Until December 2021, the main warning on their website on a page entitled “Coronavirus disease (COVID-19): How is it transmitted” only stated that infections happened “when infectious particles that pass through the air are inhaled at short range.” The advice that was prescribed internationally was to practice social distancing (one meter between people), handwashing, and disinfecting surfaces. Remember that sales of disinfectants and sanitizers as well as all kinds of gadgets, mainly sprays, fogging machines, and foot baths, originally used for livestock farms? And those crazy face shields made in China but not required in China? Let’s not go into Pharmally, the importer who used our money (government contracts). Talk about being fried in our own lard.

There were concerned medical scientists who questioned this limited “short range” theory of infections. One of them, Lidia Morawska, an aerosol scientist based in Brisbane, Australia, kept going after the WHO explaining her reservations, including known COVID infections from the very start that happened well beyond the one-meter distance.

Morawska and other scientists compiled enough data to finally convince the WHO to modify its advisories and to acknowledge “long-range airborne transmission.” Also importantly, with time, many health ministries recognized many more infections were happening indoors, where there were crowds and where ventilation was bad.

This is where little-told COVID stories need to be told. In March 2020, shortly after a pandemic was declared, there was an outbreak at a large cockfighting derby in Matina, Davao. At least 11 deaths were linked to the infections at that cockfight derby. Authorities declared a ban on all cockfighting, but in August 2021, there was an outbreak in Sta. Maria, Davao Occidental, this time connected to an “e-sabong” event. Yes, online, but the problem was that poorer cockfighting aficionados did not have internet connections and congregated in places with strong signals to share the Wi-Fi and the virus.

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And how can we forget the outbreaks in urban poor barangays, where crowded living conditions helped propel the airborne virus?

All through the pandemic, there was practically no attention given to controlling the airborne routes, especially indoors. The Japanese were the more advanced here, conducting studies early in the pandemic and pointing out that rooms had to be ventilated—old and possibly contaminated air had to be brought out of the room in exchange for new fresh air. That year, I was helping a college to build its new campus and I looked for a heating, air conditioning, and ventilation (HVAC) expert from University of the Philippines’s engineering to advise us about our air duct system. He was the country’s only HVAC expert. I found another one a few years later but he was, by then, about to migrate overseas.

Japan translated its understanding of air dynamics and airborne infections into snappy slogans, which were translated into English as 3Cs: avoid crowds, closed spaces, and close face-to-face contact with humans (I know, awkward advice). The 3C’s acknowledges both short- and long-distance airborne transmission.

Meanwhile, keep and use those masks. The other gadgets are probably more useful for museums or cleaning toilets.