UN Geneva - Multimedia Newsroom : WHO Press Conference: New terminology for airborne pathogens

Hello everybody, welcome to this WHO special embargoed briefing on the document following extensive consultations on transmission through the air.

I've got with me Doctor Jeremy Farrah, our chief scientist, and Doctor Lisa Askey, who has got a very long title, but is basically has basically been in charge of the methodology and, and, and collating this, ensuring that the science, the evidence and all the work to achieve this has been done.

So they will both explain to you how things have, what this document means, what it's going to change, and also how it came about.

And then, of course, I'll open it to your questions.

I'm sure you know, you should have received all the documents.

You should have received the document itself, a draught press release.

The final press release will look a little different in a couple of sentences.

My apologies.

And these are embargoed until 12 midday strictly today, so not far from now.

So without further ado, I'll hand over to Doctor Farrah.

Morning all.

To those in the in the room, I hope the microphone is working and I have no idea how many you're online, but wherever you are, whatever time of day, it is very warm, warm welcome.

My name's Jeremy Farrow to have met all of you.

I've been at WHO now as chief scientist for just over 10 months or so, but look forward to meeting you and look forward to meeting you in in future.

Apologies for the microphone.

So perhaps if I just open the, the, the session with a little bit of the background of where this came from, a little bit of a reflection of where I think we are now and then a little bit of reflection of, of what this means going going forward.

I think if we split it into those three, perhaps most helpful in, in explaining the background beyond what, what I hope you've you've read or you will read from the press releases and the and the document itself.

So I take you back to the end of 2021 and actually my, my predecessor who I, who I'd like to, to pay tribute at the start to everybody that started this process back in, in 2021.

And that's the time somebody before this was before I joined WHO at the time somebody said we're doing this because it's hard, not because it's easy, but it needs to get done.

And, and I'll give a bit of reflection of why I think that was such an important thing to say.

So pay tribute to everybody that started it.

It wasn't an easy process getting it started and it hasn't been an easy process going through it.

And I think that reflects the importance of why, why it was done.

So I take you back through the starts and through the first year or two of the, of the pandemic when, if you do remember it, as I'm sure you do, it was an extraordinarily challenging time.

I've been working on emerging infections for most of my professional career.

And, and this of course, was something that none of us had witnessed at the scale it was at and the novel infection, SARS COV 2 that came to cause the pandemic.

And in that.

And I was working in the UK at that time.

The level of uncertainty was, was huge and the level of scientific knowledge was limited.

And there were a lot of different perspectives, a lot of different opinions and a lot of different and, and sometimes competing scientific evidence across a range of different issues, including transmission, of course.

And some of those issues, as you know, through 2020 and 2021 became very polarised and very contentious in the debates that happened both in the scientific world and in the the public, the public debate.

So in the end of 2021, Doctor Tedros, Mike Ryan, Maria Van Kerkhoff, Sumiya Samamathan, my predecessor, and then John Reader and many others thought the area of the debate around how this pathogen, how this infection transmits through the air is one of the most contentious issues.

And we need to understand why it's so contentious and what we can help to do about it, to move the advice forward, to move the scientific community forward, and to bring people together.

And that was the genesis of why this report was commissioned in I think, November of 2021.

And it's taken us through to the end of 2023 to bring everybody together to have what at times were challenging debates amongst a range of different experts.

But then finally to all agree and, and there have been hundreds of different contributions to this report, which I took over the leadership of in May of 2023.

But I'm very proud to say that here we are with the release of the report and everybody that has contributed over that period of what is 18 months, two years, has agreed to be named in the report and be part of the report.

And indeed not just from the World Health Organisation, but with the strong support and agreement and commitment to go forward now from the Europe Centre for Disease Control, Africa Centre Disease Control, China Centre for Disease Control and the United States Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.

So I think in a difficult situation, that's that is something of of an achievement.

So that's where we are today.

The terminology is agreed and the terminology is not just about semantics of different words.

The challenge through 2020, 2122 has been that the scientific community, I'm a public health person and clinician, that this has involved people from physics, from infection control, from architecture, from engineering, from very many different disciplines.

We're all using the same words to mean subtly or importantly different things.

And when that is true in a scientific debate, it's extraordinary difficult to bring it together and understand that when I say the word airborne transmission, that or, or aerosols or droplets or whatever the word is that somebody from the physics engineering, infection control clinician, nurse, whatever, whatever professional background is making sure that we're saying the same thing.

So it's difficult to make scientific progress unless we all agree with that terminology.

So what this report does is get us to base camp to say this is the agreed terminology from that diverse group of experts from different disciplines from all around the world and that we all agree with this new, new terminology.

And we can now move on.

And what that terminology does is I think, and I hope it simplifies the categorization so that we no longer have what I think were to some degree false dichotomies between it's all this or it's all that.

And the truth is the world exists in some sort of continuum.

And so getting rid of things like size of particles being the determining factor when there are so many other factors that drive transmission through the air, humidity, temperature, environment, oxygen, air, air flow in immunity of the individual's risk and everything else.

I think the new terminology which everybody is agreed with is a, a way now going forward just 30 seconds or a minute on the future.

This is base camp.

And base camp is difficult to get to to anybody that's ever walked to base camp.

What we now need to do is keep this community of diverse experts together and now work together in a multidisciplinary way.

An easy word to say and difficult to do to make sure that we now conduct the science that tells us using this terminology and the underpinning science of it.

How now do we make sure that for diseases and infections we know about today and for those infections we may face tomorrow, how can we ensure that infection control and the control of the a pandemic, for instance, can be best mitigated or prevented in settings such as clinical facilities, hospitals, primary care, but also in workplaces, schools, transport systems and others?

I don't think we could have done that two years ago with that diverse group of people.

I think we can now because the terminology's been agreed.

So that's a long winded summary, sorry of the genesis of it, why it was done at the start, where we've got to now and then what I think is the future.

And I'll hand over now to Lisa to talk us through a little bit more of the background methodology for everything.

Thanks very much, Jeremy and, and, and good morning, Good evening, good afternoon to everyone.

I'm Lisa Esky, I'm the scientist and methods lead within the Science division at WHOHQ.

So just a little bit more on how we conducted the consultation to give you that information.

It was, as Jeremy said, WHO led and convened, but very much supported by the four CDCS from Africa, China, Europe and the USA, including them nominating representatives on the initial small working group that was formed to to drive and direct the process.

Out of that, a panel of 41 global experts were chosen to constitute the the full, what we call the full technical consultation group.

And they were included because of their for various reasons, but predominantly because this was a technical consultation for their technical expertise and because they have had been, were highly cited in the scientific literature on these, on this topic.

They came from, as Jeremy alluded to, a very wide range of disciplines.

So there were people from epidemiology, microbiology, clinical management, infection prevention and control, engineering, physics, air pollution, aerosol science, aerobiology, public health and social measures and social science amongst others.

So a wide and diverse group.

And we also needed to ensure as this was a global consultation both to the best extent possible, gender and geographic balance.

All the experts were declared and were assessed for conflicts of interest and no significant disclosed conflicts were were considered relevant.

We 2 chairs, Professor Kang from India and Professor Lee from Hong Kong were chosen as the chair and Co Chair of the group.

The process was there was 4 actual meetings, 3 virtual and one hybrid between May 2022 and November 2023.

So over about a year and a half.

During those meetings and in particular in between following very the the progressive draughts of the document, there was extensive consultation with the the experts and their their constituencies who with whom they shared the draught documents and we received both verbal and written feedback.

A huge amount, over 500 separate pieces of individual feedback were were submitted and were considered, all of them as part of finalising the report.

It would be fair to say that that the, the debate at times was robust, but I think ultimately quite respectful.

But it is also true that there were very disparate views in the, in the, in this group, not unexpectedly, given their, the diversity of their expertise.

And there was debates at length, which is, you know, added to the length of the of the process.

But all very important and necessary.

Finally, just to say that this is a, a document where everyone has agreed, I think it would be fair to say that not every member of the of the technical working group fully agreed with every single or was or the every single term was their preferred term, which is necessary when people had disparate views.

But that everyone agreed in the end that this was the the best consensus.

And going forward, they're all willing to put their names to the document, including very importantly, the statement of support you'll see on the first page from the Centres for Disease Control.

I think that's enough for me on the process over.

Thank you.

Thank you both.

Now I'm going to open the floor to questions.

I am not seeing any hands up, aha.

But there's a hand up in the room.

So go ahead, Christopher for Agence France Press.

I have lots of questions, but because the memory of what we went through all of us are very fresh and the debate and how harsh it was about droplets or aerosols is still very rigid in my mind also.

So I was just wondering know we go to IR PS if I understood that correctly and and we size doesn't matter anymore.

My question is what does it mean from a practical point of view when the tenants of the droplet theory when we go back to 2020 for example, put a lot of emphasis on washing our hands, cleaning surfaces, etcetera, where the aerosol people wear more for you know, open your window, go out, don't meet too many people, etcetera.

So I know we have one word for those two realities.

So how do we practically fight if we, how do we do it practically from now on?

I mean, I'm not sure I'm quite clear.

But what I mean is just that because we only have one word to describe different realities now, do we just apply all the preventive measures in one go just to make sure, or are we more selective and how do we do that?

No, I, I, I think the question is very clear and actually gets to the heart of a lot of the, the debate.

What a few things to say.

I don't think there are two realities and I think that's a very important part of the report that comes out.

In other words, there's not something that happens like this and has no action like that.

There is much more of a continuum, which I and I've run this past friends family who had nothing to do with medicine, science or public health or whatever.

And I have to say, I think they feel that is more intuitive.

It feels more intuitive to me because the factors depend on so many factors, much of which is in the report.

So for instance, let's take another infection, doesn't matter what we call, let's call it a, which causes me to to have a secondary infection.

The the, the particle sizes might be slightly bigger because it has a lot of mucus that will fall quicker onto surfaces.

Somebody else may have much more immunity, They may produce smaller particles which then go into the air.

So I think every infection in every person is going to be subtly or importantly different depending on their immunity, the humidity, the environment, the temperature, the room they're in or the the space they're in, the wind flow, etcetera, etcetera.

So rather than seeing it as two realities, I would rather see it as I think the report talks about as a continuum.

To your second point, does this mean everything changes?

It does not change today, no, because it's critical now having agreed the terminology that we now do the work that demonstrates where the greatest risks are and what we can do to reduce or prevent or or mitigate those risks.

So for instance, your comment about hand washing coming into December and January of 2019-2020.

20 the evidence from many infections is the importance of hand washing.

Nobody should stop hand washing.

Hand washing should remain a critical part.

It has importance in influenza.

It has important in other respiratory infections.

It has importance as we know in all sorts of other infectious diseases, including water borne infectious diseases and others.

So the message must never go out that hand washing doesn't remain critically important and and was important in in SARS COV 2.

The other thing to say is, is that this this report is not just about COVID, although of course maybe it was stimulated by COVID and the realisation that the scientific community was very disparate and diverse, with strong opinions and needed to be convened and helped to in some ways to come to come together.

What I would hope now is having convened that scientific multidisciplinary group, all of whom have agreed with the document, that that group now stays together and the physicists and the engineers and the infection control people and the clinicians and the all of those professions.

And then my hope is that now the funders around the world and my previous life, I was a funder, now come together and support that work to allow us to interrogate what this means for control of infectious diseases.

And I having watched this over the last 2-3 years, I can see that already starting with people coming together from different disciplines, from physics, from engineering, from infection control, and doing work together that would never have done before 2019.

Thank you and I should point you to a report that came out through the magic of IT.

It was actually meant to come out after we had the definitions on what to do with COVID.

An excellent report.

Talk about the engineers.

It's been done with CERN.

So with the engineers, the scientists looking at transmission and looking at the dynamics on on mitigation measures that you could use for COVID.

And there will be reports looking at all these different kinds of pathogens which will follow from this work.

Just as Doctor Farrar said, we're at base camp now.

The work to get to the specifics is, is ongoing.

There's a question and I'll, I'll that, that report's publicly available, but I'll send you the link.

Quite a few questions online.

So we're going to Nina Larsen first.

Nina, unmute yourself and ask your question.

Yes, thank you for taking my question.

I just wanted to go back to early 2020 with COVID and ask about if there was any discussion around what the the consequences were of this, the false dichotomy that you mentioned between in the two camps between droplets and aerosols.

And if, if that sort of standoff is seen as because of, you know, the advice that was given based on very sort of rigid definitions, if that is seen as having having contributed to not sufficient advice for protection, for instance, actually costing lives.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So I it's Jeremy Farah here.

I can I can comment on not from from from very similar debates where I was at the time which was which was in the UK and part of the scientific advisory group and.

I think at that time in this, let's say the first quarter, first half of, of, of 2020, the decisions that were made.

And, and if you certainly in the UK that for instance, as our previous question, the the hand washing was, was a major feature of, of the advice was based on prior knowledge going into 2020.

Much of it informed, of course, through influenza, the most common respiratory infection that, that many of us and still think would be the cause of a pandemic.

And that the strongest evidence in that.

And I remember being in auk SAGE meeting in early first few months of 2020 where this was debated and where the, the, the, the evidence including from influenza strongest was for indeed for for hand washing.

And that was the advice at the time.

Over the course of the rest of March, April, May, June of 2020, of course, as as we started to learn more about COVID, itself, a novel pathogen, that evidence changed and the weight of that evidence changed not just through single opinions, but through a collective sense of what the collective evidence showed.

And as a result, through March and April, that advice changed.

I, I think one of the great challenges of the last three years has been dealing with uncertainty, dealing with imperfect information, dealing with uncertain scientific evidence and that that evidence evolves and changes dynamically.

I think here now speaking as a scientist, but also somebody involved in policy work during that time, what can you do in that space?

You can use the best available evidence you have at the time, probably based on prior knowledge to the event that's happening, do that in the best faith possible and have the humility when that evidence changes to adapt that evidence and, and change the policy.

And I, I think that is what happened during the first half of, of 2020, including Awho, but that was my experience as well in, in, in the UK.

Thank you very much for that.

Nila, you've still got your hand up, but I'm presuming that's finished for you unless you've got a follow up.

No.

OK, we'll go to Yeah, sorry.

I have a follow up.

You have a follow up.

OK, I'll let you have a follow up and then we'll go to Maya.

Thank you.

I just wanted to I, I understand, I absolutely understand that about the shifting understanding of, you know, of this novel pathogen and that the scientific understanding shifted over time.

So that's totally understandable.

I was wondering if if this I guess rigid definition of what, you know, droplets, the five Micron particles and and the fact that this understanding that they wouldn't spread very far if that perhaps delayed may have delayed some of the the other advice that came later with with the masks and and more more distancing and more outdoor door to take activities outdoors, for instance.

Thank you.

Yeah, I, I think it's because the evidence at that time as it was beyond this issue, it was in different areas as well, including for instance, care in intensive care units for people with, with, with COVID, where in the early days intensive care units were treating in one way.

And later in the pandemic they changed the way of treatment.

And again, having been involved in many epidemics back to 1999 and Nipah virus in, in Malaysia, that that I'm afraid when you face a novel pathogen is inevitable.

But what, what can you do in those circumstances?

You can, you can say what does this, what do we believe this to be the closest to?

And what strong evidence base do we have that would help us offer that advice in those first critical three, 2-3 months?

And then as that situation evolves, we we, we change our minds.

Now going into the pandemic.

And again, as I say, I remember vividly the conversations at the SAGE in the UK that, that the, the strongest evidence for an infection that at that moment seemed most likely to to guide us in terms of COVID was from influenza.

And the strongest evidence from influenza at that time was felt to be the washing of hands and and closer proximity.

Now with COVID that subsequently changed.

And actually I think the advice then changed pretty rapidly, both certainly in WHO, but also I think in in the UK and around the world.

What we need to do going forward, because we will face new pandemics.

Of course we know that we're living in an era of complex and more frequent epidemics and pandemics is to be able to garner this sort of information in the inter epidemic and pandemic time.

And that's why I hope that this report now giving everybody the same terminology will drive an understanding in places like CERN that Margaret talked about a second ago.

But working with clinicians and infection control people to say if we face this type of pathogen, let's say it was a SARS like pathogen, or if we paste another pathogen like this with these dynamics, what would be the best advice?

But let's, whether I'm a physicist, infection control person, or or a clinician, let's do that together.

Because otherwise, when we come to a pandemic and the chaos and fear that you're in, in the midst of the start of a pandemic, the danger is people will revert back to their types and not stick together, which is what I think we have to do.

Thank you very much for that.

Now I'll go to Maya.

Maya plants from a UNUN brief.

Maya, unmute yourself and ask your question.

Thank you very much for taking my question.

Doctor Harris, my question actually is regarding the report.

I have not received it.

Could you send it to me?

Because I, I didn't see the report beforehand.

I don't know if you send a copy around, but if you could do it my to my e-mail.

Sure.

And my question is for Doctor Jeremy Farrar, I, how, how did you arrive to the idea that you needed to actually come to, to redefine the terms or make them more precise or more encompassing?

What did you see was lacking in the way that the conversation was conducted before?

I think many, many areas of, of science.

And I, I, I speak now as a scientist almost 20 years living in Vietnam.

I speak as 10 years as head of a major global philanthropy, the Welcome Trust.

And now I'm in my role at WHO.

So I've seen science from all angles and, and scientists are wonderful, but they often go back to their scientific disciplines and work within those disciplines.

And working across disciplines and cross sectors is, is a challenge.

The terminology we use, the language we use, the, the culture of the way we work is different between different disciplines.

And we often force people into those disciplines very early in their careers.

I I'm a great believer in interfaces between disciplines and I'm a great believer in people that can bridge disciplines, polymaths that are able to respect each other's skills and expertise, but nevertheless bring communities together.

And I, I think this is an example where infection control clinicians, I've mentioned them all, engineers, physicists, transport experts, architects, and the rest actually all have a role to play in this space because it is complicated.

It is complicated because it depends on my immunity.

It depends on your immunity.

It depends on the humidity.

It depends on the size of the room.

It depends on the air flow.

It depends on the size of the particle.

It depends if you're coughing over me, for instance, from a distance or close.

It depends whether I've been vaccinated or whether I'm immune, depends on my age, depends on whether I've got diabetes or I've got other conditions.

It's complicated and when often things are complicated, people want to reduce it to the simplest possible dimension, which often means working with your own discipline.

Whereas the truth, and there's a nice quote somewhere from Doctor Tedros somewhere in one of these documents about it.

It's not who is right, it's what is right.

And that's where I think bringing teams together in a multidisciplinary way, and it is by no means limited to this issue and it's trick.

It's a challenge to work across sectors and across disciplines.

But I think the pride, if you like, or the success I think of this is that everybody who is part of this has agreed to be named on it, to be part of it.

And with the four centres of disease controls around the world and The Who coming together around a common terminology, that is progress.

It's progress to base camp.

Now we need to turn that into what it means for for the future.

And just to add, we did, we did see that there was variation across disciplines.

But to ensure that that was a real observation, we did undertake a, a large scoping review of the existing literature on those terms.

And by an internal, an internal group of epidemiologists and evidence specialists did that and found exactly that, that we, we, there was a huge variation in the, in the termini terminology used to describe the same phenomenon across quite a lot of, of disciplines, which is, is exactly why we, we felt we needed to bring those disciplines together to resolve, to try and resolve that.

Thank you.

And we've got a question online from John after.

OK, so we've got Jamie in the room too, online from John Zaracostas.

John, unmute yourself and ask a question.

Good morning, Margaret.

I'll, I'll wait.

My question is on another issue.

So I'll wait because I've got a question for Doctor Farah on another item, but I'll wait until this item is finished.

Thanks.

OK, well, I think we're about to wrap up because I'm going to have to whisk them back to the main building.

They've got a very busy day.

So ask your question.

And I think Jamie, you've got one in the room.

I can ask on the same subject.

OK, but, but, but I would, I would well let Jamie go ahead.

I would sympathise with John's having you present.

Today is obviously a great opportunity to ask other questions beyond this.

Jamie.

Associated Press I just wanted to, I'm sorry I came in a little bit late.

I listened to some of it at the beginning.

I had a call at 9:30 the Can you tell us a little bit about what these new definitions might mean and how you've assessed the usefulness of mask wearing in connection with these new definitions that you're laying out?

I mean, what, what is the science shown about the utility of both in dealing with droplets and aerosol?

Yeah.

The the it's, I think it's very important to to be clear what this document tried to do and, and I hope did I think it's also very clear to have the humility to say this is not what this document did.

I, I would encourage everybody to both take this document.

Sorry, there's a lot of reading take this document and the document that Margaret referred to earlier, which was a joint maybe for the first time.

I don't know WHO CERN piece of work which folk a which from outside Maria Van Kerkhoff LED.

It's very technical, but Maria's great at explaining things and CERN are and it tries to bring the CERN physicists type world together with with the public health people and address particularly COVID.

I also know of work and I'll I hope you won't mind recording the place.

I also know work for instance, now at Massachusetts technology with five or six different disciplines working together in chambers that have been invented in the last year.

It's part because of this work that are now looking at how air flow and humidity and temperature set, for instance, impact on the on the egg when COVID is put into the atmosphere, either experimentally or even indeed from individuals that are known to be infected.

And I'll give you another example of work that's now going on again, catalysed by this report is I don't, sorry, I don't, I don't know if the Big Brother programme translates around the world where you put a whole pile of people into a, into a, a house and they live together for a period of time.

That sort of work is now going on with people known to, to have infections, to look at where infections are in the air, on surfaces, on their hands, on their mucosal surfaces, and also quantify those and then change the airflow temperatures, blah, blah.

So I, I don't think that work would have happened at that scale and quality prior to, to COVID and prior to this report.

So I think this, I think over the next one year you will see an explosion, I hope of new scientific work that gets exactly at your question.

And I don't I would actually admit that at the moment, apart from that certain paper and this work I've mentioned to you, we have we this has been a neglected area of science and I think COVID has demonstrated just how important it is.

Now, John, you can have your extra special mystery question of my yes, yes, it's a chance since we have the chief scientist.

I was wondering if you could bring us up to speed understand player of the H5 N 1 outbreak in various countries and given the **** case mortality rate of this virus, what is the situation and how is WHO coordinating with all the regional offices and national governments.

Thank you.

I'm still learning WHO protocol.

Can I answer off the Oh yes, and it's relevant to this this this this document is basically base camp for that too.

So I'm, I'm John, I'm I'm I'm not happy to be able to be answered that question.

But but having been involved in 2004 with the reoccurrence of H5M1 when working in Vietnam and and being one of the few people around the world that's actually treated patients with H5M1 during that epidemic in in Vietnam.

This, this remains, I think an enormous concern.

If you if I've got a few minutes to explain and I and I do hope as a group, as a, a community of professionals, this remains on your agenda.

Because we know that H5M1 is a influenza infection predominantly started in poultry and ducks and has spread effectively over the course of the last one or two years to become a global zoonotic animal pandemic.

The great concern, of course, is that in doing so and infecting ducks and chickens, but now increasingly mammals, that that virus now evolves and develops the ability to infect humans and then critically, the ability to go from human to human transmission.

And we know that in the rare cases, I think I've stopped my head, 4 or 500 cases so far of humans, the mortality rate is extraordinarily ****.

So to me this is a major concern and obviously Maria Van Kirkoff is is focus is the lead on this within, within WHO and has an enormous experience in all of this.

And I know even this week there was a convening on vaccine development for H5M1 for therapeutics for influenza, which we are, we are not where we need to be.

And ensuring that regional offices and country offices and public health authorities around the world have got the capability to diagnose H5 N 1.

The current out outbreak for want of a better word in America amongst cows is really concerning as well and also talks to this issue of of transmission.

We have to understand in those *** settings, it sheds how H5M1 is transmitting because because it may be learning, not learning, evolving into transmitting in different ways.

Do the milking structures of cows create aerosols?

Is it the the environment which they're living in?

Is it the transport system that that is spreading this around the country?

So this this is a huge concern.

And I think we have to watch more than watch.

We have to make sure that if H5M1 did come across to humans with human, human transmission, that we were in a position to immediately respond with access equitably to vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics.

So John, I'm really happy you've brought that up.

I'm, I think it is a continues to be a major concern.

And of course it's not the only influenza virus that we, we have to watch.

We have the human, mostly human influenza viruses every year with seasonal.

But I know there's been a, a new case of a novel, novel avian virus just in the last week or two reported in Vietnam, which we also have to watch.

So whilst we worry about COVID, quite rightly, we worry about monkey pox, we worry about alt cholera and we have to keep an eye on influenza.

Thank you very much.

And a highly relevant question, John.

I think we certainly have run out of time.

I'll just ask Lisa and Jeremy if they've got any final remarks, anything further?

No, just thank you to I don't know how many are online, but thank you also to the huge audience here in the room.

And it's my first time down at the pally doing one of these.

And of course, we're always available if you need us.

So thank you.

So thank you all.

And I'll, I'll send the link to that CERN report as well so that you can find that to all of you.

And, and Maya, I'll send the report specifically to your e-mail.

And as I said, the embargo is 12 noon, which is soon.

We've got an hour and a half.

WHO Press Conference: New terminology for airborne pathogens - 18 April 2024