Researchers question whether corona is a drip infection

"For the researchers working on this, there is no doubt that the virus is spreading in the air," says professor and aerosol scientist Lidia Morawska at Queensland University of Technology to Nature.

American scientists have been able to show that the virus can survive in small air particles called aerosols and transmit infection for at least three hours. However, the experiment was carried out in a laboratory-created environment with special conditions, but the researchers still believe that it is not possible to rule out that the infection can be spread in this way.

Agnes Wold, a professor of clinical bacteriology at the University of Gothenburg, disagrees. She takes the spread of measles as an example of what it would look like if the corona virus were airborne.

- When we had an outbreak of measles in Gothenburg year-end 2017/2018, that person infected several who were just in the same waiting room, but this virus does not behave. We can see from both the infection tracking in Sweden among the people who came home with the infection from the Alps and from the infection tracking in China that the sick infected mainly relatives in the same household, says Agnes Wold.

If the infection is spread through the air, it is possible for higher amounts of virus to build up over time in confined spaces, and for the virus particles to travel longer distances.

- Aerosol contamination is very small droplets that remain in the air for several hours and can spread through the ventilation. This is how measles, chickenpox, tuberculosis and legionella spread, ”says Agnes Wold.

But she does not rule out that the new corona virus can spread through the air in certain types of health care interventions.

- Aerosols may occur when performing intensive care procedures to help the patient with breathing, but otherwise, corona is a drip infection where the droplets reach a few meters before they fall to the floor.

The article presents a study showing that aerosols with the new corona virus were found in and around hospitals in Wuhan and in entrances to two department stores in the same area. But scientists are unsure if the virus levels are high enough to infect a human.

Agnes Wold is questioning how to arrive at the results.

- Find aerosols, how to do it? I do not know of any such methods. What is also interesting is that it is a pathway of infection and then you have to show that it has infected someone, she says.

However, she thinks it is wrong to say that the disease is only spread through coughs or sneezing, and she also says that we do not know how much those who have mild or no symptoms are actually infected.

- You know that these drops come out when you talk and breathe, and you can get infected by talking to each other. But if you keep a distance of one and a half meters, the droplets cannot reach and cannot be infected, says Agnes Wold.