Thread by @Xy5Z89

#Coronavirus #STUDY (#USA)

One of the so far unanswered questions about the coronavirus pandemic is that of transmission: Can Sars-CoV-2 also jump over several meters from one person to another? There are some indications for this,

such as mass contamination in large and poorly ventilated rooms. The main suspects are aerosols - droplets smaller than five micrometers, i.e. only about a tenth the diameter of a human hair.

In contrast to larger droplets that fall from the mouth or nose to the ground after a short distance, the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus is said to be able to literally float through the air in these aerosols.

The World Health Organization (WHO) had already recognized the possible transmission of Sars-CoV-2 through aerosols at the beginning of July. But even if many consider the aerosols to be guilty - so far there has been no proof.

"Whether or not Sars-CoV-2 can be transmitted through the air has been controversial so far," John Lednicky, a microbiologist from the University of Florida, told the US television station CBS.

However, a new study that Lednicky and colleagues carried out could now shed light on the situation. Because the US researchers have succeeded in filtering aerosols with viable viruses from the air, which must have previously traveled a distance of several meters.

In view of the discovery, other researchers are already symbolically speaking of a "smoking gun", ie the perpetrator's still smoking firearm that convicts him of the crime. Lednicky's researchers had installed two air sample collectors near the patients on a Covid 19 infirmary.

One of them about two meters away, the other almost five meters away. The pathogens could be captured in both - the laboratory later showed that these viruses were also able to infect cells.

The study is a preprint that has not yet passed the usual examination by specialist colleagues. The researchers from Florida have developed a device that uses pure water vapor to enlarge the aerosols so that they can be easily collected from the air.

Once detected, the pathogens were quickly directed into a special liquid enriched with salts, sugar and proteins, in which they were preserved. If Sars-CoV-2 could actually be transmitted several meters through the air,

this would call into question the importance of keeping a distance, or at least the required distance of at least 1.5 meters - but only indoors.

Because aerosols are so light that it is considered likely that they will be quickly distributed outdoors to such an extent that they no longer pose any danger. In an office, however, aerosols could be distributed throughout the room within minutes, explains Martin Kriegel,

an expert in energy and ventilation technology at the TU Berlin in the "Wirtschaftswoche" magazine. However, the Florida study is not yet conclusive proof that aerosols are actually contagious over long distances.

For example, the amount of virus collected was very small - the researchers were only able to capture 74 virus particles per liter. However, the study shows that viable viruses are in the air.

STUDY (ENGLISH): medrxiv.org/content/10.110…

WIRTSCHAFTSWOCH (GERMAN) @wiwo : wiwo.de/technologie/fo…

@threadreaderapp please unroll