You are no more immune to COVID social distancing at 6 or 60 feet: study

Social distancing indoors at 60 feet is no safer than at 6 feet – and “exposure time” indoors is actually much longer, new study from Massachusetts Institute of Technology finds .

In a report that questions widely accepted prevention guidelines for COVID-19, researchers say there is “little benefit” to the “6-foot rule” from health officials, particularly when ‘they wear a mask inside.

“The distance doesn’t help you much and it also gives you a false sense of security because you are as safe at 6 feet as you are at 60 feet if you are indoors,” said Martin Bazant, professor of engineering at MIT, author of the study, told CNBC.

“Everyone in this space is at pretty much the same risk, actually.”

During the study, researchers calculated the risk of exposure to the virus based on factors such as time spent indoors, air filtration and circulation, according to the study, published this week. in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America. .

They also looked at factors such as mask use, vaccination, and respiratory activity such as breathing, eating, and speaking.

They found that the time spent indoors with an infected person is more important than how far away you are – a factor the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization have overlooked, according to the reports. researchers.

“It really has no physical basis, because the air a person breathes when wearing a mask tends to move up and down elsewhere in the room, so you’re more exposed to the mid-background. [air]Bazant said.

He added: “What our analysis continues to show is that a lot of spaces that have been closed don’t actually need to be. Often the space is large enough, the ventilation is good enough, the time people spend together is such that these spaces can be operated safely even at full capacity and the scientific support for reduced capacity in these spaces does not exist. is really not very good. “

Bazant said the 6-foot social distancing rules that have shut down businesses and schools are “just not reasonable.”

“We need scientific information conveyed to the public in a way that is not just a fear campaign, but is in fact based on analysis,” he said.

The CDC’s social distancing guidelines are likely based on preliminary studies with large respiratory droplets of particles, he said.

“This emphasis on distancing has been really misplaced from the very beginning. The CDC or the WHO never really provided a rationale for this, ”Bazant said.

“The only rationale that I know of is based on studies of coughing and sneezing where they look at the bigger particles that might settle on the ground and even then it’s very rough, you can definitely have more or less reach. shorter, large droplets. “

The study does not mention whether there is a difference in safety risk between zero and six feet.

In general, masks work by blocking larger respiratory droplets, including those from coughs and sneezes – but most people who transmit the coronavirus do not have these symptoms, researchers say.