The CDC has removed its guidelines that say the coronavirus can be spread through tiny air particles after posting it Friday.
The Centers for Disease Control said it was posted by mistake on the agency’s website, and the guideline was only a draft.
Initially, the CDC said that COVID-19 was mainly spread between people in close contact with one another through droplets that land on another person nearby.
However, on Friday, there was an addition that said particles could be spread through the air. On Monday, the CDC deleted the addition and kept what was originally there.
“A draft version of proposed changes to these recommendations was posted in error to the agency’s official website,” a CDC spokesman said in an email, according to the Wall Street Journal. “Once this process has been completed, the updated language will be posted.”
But not everyone is buying that it was a mistake; some think that it was taken down due to pressure by Trump to get things open again.
“I think the statement on airborne transmission that was briefly available on the CDC website was correct,” said Linsey Marr, a Virginia Tech professor of civil and environmental engineering and an expert on airborne transmission of viruses, according to the Wall Street Journal. “I hope that they are just refining the language and that they’re planning to put it back up there.”
In July, over 200 scientists asked the CDC to acknowledge that COVID-19 can be transmitted through the air, and many studies have shown this to be the case.
This all comes after the CDC removed a recommendation last week that said people in close contact with COVID patients don’t need to get tested if they don’t have symptoms. It’s long been known that people with COVID can be asymptomatic.
