COVID-19 Is Transmitted Through Aerosols. We Have Enough Evidence, Now It Is Time to Act

AUGUST 25, 2020

By Jose-Luis Jiminez, Professor of Chemistry and a Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

Contrary to public health messaging, I, together with many other scientists, believe that a substantial share of COVID-19 cases are the result of transmission through aerosols. The evidence in favor of aerosols is stronger than that for any other pathway, and officials need to be more aggressive in expressing this reality if we want to get the pandemic under control. 

 “Aerosol” (sometimes referred to as “airborne”) transmission is similar to droplet transmission, except that the bits of fluid are so small that they can linger in the air for minutes to hours. To understand the scale of aerosols, the diameter of a human hair is about 80 microns, and aerosols smaller than about 50 microns can float in the air long enough to be inhaled. SARS-CoV-2 is only 0.1 microns in diameter, so there is room for plenty of viruses in aerosols. 

For complete text of article:  https://time.com/5883081/covid-19-transmitted-aerosols/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email-share-article&utm-term=ideas_covid-19