Coronavirus can travel up to 8 metres from exhalation, stay in air for hours researcher says
By: Team Ifairer | Posted: 02-04-2020
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The current physical distancing guidelines provided by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may not be adequate to curb the coronavirus spread, according to a research which says the gas cloud from a cough or sneeze may help virus particles travel up to 8 metres.
The research, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, noted that the current guidelines issued by the WHO and CDC are based on outdated models from the 1930s of how gas clouds from a cough, sneeze, or exhalation spread.
Study author, MIT associate professor Lydia Bourouiba, warned that droplets of all sizes can travel 23 to 27 feet, or 7-8 metres, carrying the pathogen. According to Bourouiba, the current guidelines are based on "arbitrary" assumptions of droplet size, "overly simplified, and "may limit the effectiveness of the proposed interventions" against the deadly pandemic.
She explained that the old guidelines assume droplets to be one of two categories, small or large, taking short-range semi-ballistic trajectories when a person exhales, coughs, or sneezes. However based on more recent discoveries, the MIT scientist said, sneezes and coughs are made of a puff cloud that carries ambient air, transporting within it clusters of droplets of a wide range of sizes.