Just breathing or talking may be enough to spread COVID-19 after all
06.04.2020
Just breathing or talking may be enough to spread COVID-19 after all
The coronavirus that causes COVID-19 may spread through the air in tiny particles that infected people exhale during normal breathing and speech. Experts had said that the virus spreads only through large droplets from a cough or sneeze before.
Until now, experts have said that the virus, called SARS-CoV-2, doesn’t spread through the air in that way, but rather through relatively large droplets released when people cough or sneeze. Those droplets can contaminate surfaces or objects and infect people who touch the surface and then touch their faces.
Large droplets are still a means of infection, but researchers now say that tiny airborne particles may also carry infectious virus. “Currently available research supports the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 could be spread via bioaerosols generated directly by patients’ exhalation,” researchers from the U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine wrote in an April 1 report to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
If the coronavirus is airborne, that could help explain why it is so contagious, and can spread before people have symptoms.
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