US warns of infections through breathing as virus toll mounts

A top US scientist warned Friday that the new coronavirus can be spread through normal breathing, fuelling recommendations that everyone wear masks as several nations posted record death tolls.

With half of humanity under lockdown orders, governments have been racing to find ways to flatten the rise of the virus, which has infected more than one million people around the world.

Anthony Fauci, the veteran US expert who is leading the government's scientific response, backed recent scholarship that found SARS-CoV-2 can be suspended in the ultrafine mist let out when people exhale.

Fauci, head of infectious diseases at the National Institutes of Health, told Fox News that the guidance on masks would be changed "because of some recent information that the virus can actually be spread even when people just speak, as opposed to coughing and sneezing."
"The worst is yet to come," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, referring to countries such as Syria, Libya and Yemen. "The COVID-19 storm is now coming to all these theaters of conflict."