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VIDEO: Micro droplets may be coronavirus' third transmission —scientists

Keep your distance by two meters or six feet. That’s the golden rule now in preventing transmission of COVID-19.
But scientists from the US and Japan said this may not be enough as the novel coronavirus could have a third mode of transmission — via micro-droplets.
Lydia Bourouiba, an associate professor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studied for years about the dynamics of coughs and sneezes and found that such exhalations cause gaseous clouds that can travel up to 27 feet.
Bourouiba said a person who sneezes or coughs produce not just exhale large droplets into the air but also micro-droplets that is dissipated as a puff of cloud.
The microdroplets can reach as far as 33 to 100 ft per second.
Those microdroplets travel in the surrounding air and “carries within it clusters of droplets with a continuum of droplet sizes.”
She said the current guidelines set out by the World Health Organisation and the US Center Disease Control and Prevention may be “ineffective” in limiting the spread of the coronavirus disease. Because it was based on the 1930 study on pathogen transmission which says that small droplets evaporate faster than they settle.
The MIT professor noted that even Chinese scientists found SARS-CoV-2 virus particles in the ventilation systems in hospital rooms of patients with COVID-19.
“Finding virus particles in these systems is more consistent with the turbulent gas cloud hypothesis of disease transmission .. because it explains how viable virus particles can travel long distances from patients,” Bourguiba explained.
Japanese researchers also found out micro droplets can be shared during conversations.
“It seems transmissions are happening during conversations. And even when people are standing a certain distance apart. These cases can’t be explained by ordinary droplet infection,” Kazuhiro Tateda, president of the Japanese Association for Infectious Disease, said.
“We think infection comes from micrometer particles. This transmission mechanism can be called ‘micro-droplet infection,’” Tateda added in an interview with Japanese state-owned NHK Television.
The risk of infection through microdroplets becomes even greater in a closed space with poor ventilation.
Masashita Yamakawa, associate professor at Kyoto Institute of Technology, simulated in a lab the transmission of exhalations in an airtight room. A person who coughs exhales microdroplets that stayed in the air for 20 minutes.
“If the air isn’t flowing, the microdroplets won’t move. And since they can’t move on their own, they stay in place for some time,” Yamakawa explained.
Although this dynamics of microdroplets have not been studied on SARS-COV-2 virus, Japanese experts believe it opening windows to increase air circulation can get rid of the microdroplets.
“What is important is to create two openings. Do this at least once an hour so that lowers the risk of infection considerably,” Tateda advised.
READ MORE: Coronavirus can survive on footwear for up to 5 days: experts

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