Soumya Swaminathan, Chief WHO scientist reveals key Covid-19 blunder by the agency

Soumya Swaminathan, outgoing chief scientist of the World Health Organization (WHO) admitted that the body should have warned the public that Covid-19 can be transmitted through aerosols “much earlier” than it did.

Soumya Swaminathan announced her resignation from her post last week, said that, WHO made mistake, when it did not more rapidly labeling the coronavirus as airborne based, on the available evidence. she added that, “it is something that has cost the organization”.

Soumya noted that “the WHO did talk about all the methods, including ventilation and masking, that could thwart the spread of the disease. But at the same time, we were not forcefully saying: ‘This is an airborne virus.’ I regret that we didn’t do this much, much earlier”.

Swaminathan explained that “a mixture of things was behind this miscalculation. She added that she was “very new in the role of chief scientist, and her job had not been defined. What happens at WHO is that the technical departments do the guidelines, and at the science division, we just set the norms of how to do guidelines. So, it was not my role, and neither did anyone ask me to get involved at that stage”.