According to a recent report, COVID loses almost all ability to infect within certain situations. This is extremely surprising for the liberal bobbleheads, that is for sure.
This new study has revealed that the novel coronavirus will lose at least 90 percent of its ability to infect people at least 20 minutes after it becomes airborne.
The Aerosol Research Center at the University of Bristol says that it has conducted a first-of-its-kind study that is attempting to throw light on how the coronavirus behaves once it has become airborne during the exhalation process. However, in the interest of full disclosure, the study is yet to be peer-reviewed.
“People have been focused on poorly ventilated spaces and thinking about airborne transmission over meters or across a room. I’m not saying that doesn’t happen, but I still think the greatest risk of exposure is when you’re close to someone,” research center director Jonathan Reid told The Guardian, which first reported the study on Tuesday.
“When you move further away, not only is the aerosol diluted down, there’s also less infectious virus because the virus has lost infectivity [as a result of time],” he added.
The study suggests that these virus particles will leave the lungs during the exhalation process and then promptly lose water. A rapid increase in pH levels will soon follow as these particles transition to lower levels of carbon dioxide.
The good news is that both of these factors will hamper its ability to infect another person, although the speed of the virus particles will only dry out based on the humidity of the surrounding air, according to the study.
After the humidity reaches a rate of lower than 50 percent, the virus will lose literally as much as half of its ability to infect within five seconds, the study pointed out.
At a 90 percent humidity level, the infection ability of the virus is reduced at a slower rate, with up to 52 percent of its particles still being infectious after five minutes.
However, the study also claimed that the temperature of the air had no effect on how infectious the virus was, just the surrounding humidity.
It also pointed out that the aerostability data was lining up with the view that the virus would usually only be spread over short distances. The assumption of the study was that the short-distance transmission had been caused by large droplets that fell to the ground and did not travel as far.
“The rapid loss of infectivity demonstrated in these measurements provides an alternative explanation for a short transmission distance, with rapid airborne losses of viral infectivity making transmission decreasingly likely as the distance from the particle source is increased, even if the particles that contain the virus are small and able to travel long distances,” the study elaborated.
This loss in infectivity was compounded by “the considerable dilution in aerosol concentration that results following exhalation and transport beyond the short-range,” it added.
In a nutshell, Professor Reid noted that if he is meeting friends in a pub, the virus will lose almost all ability to infect when it is from someone all the way across the room. Simply put, it is more likely that Reid will either get the virus from his friends or his friends will get it from him than him getting it from a stranger far away in the same building.
