The findings regarding the Covid-19 virus spread has reached a whole new level. in the initial days the scientists had confirmed that the virus is not capable of spreading through air, but recently they have found out that the virus can spread through air.
The resent study was done on the context of the virus spread in a poorly ventilated bus in China. A single man was able to spread the virus to nearly 12 people even though many were not sitting close to him. This led to the conclusion that there are chances of the disease getting spread through air.
A recently published article published in JAMA Internal Medicine reviews the risk of airborne infection by taking a close look at travelers who made a 50-minute trip to a Buddhist event in the eastern Chinese city of Ningbo. The study seeks to find the results of such a trip in a bus which was done during the month of January, way before the face masks became a preventive measure against the virus.
The scientists were able to identify a passenger who was likely patient zero because of his initial contacts with people from the Wuhan city. The researchers were also able to track the positions of the other passengers sat and also test them for the virus, with 23 of 68 passengers of the same bus later confirmed as infected.
The study was proper and systematic. They carried out the study with necessary diagrams highlighting the positions of each infected passengers.
The one important thing that the scientist found was that people in the front and back of the bus along with the ones three to six feet outside the bus were also infected. Thus, the experts said that infectious droplets can travel through air.
Another major finding was that the researchers were able to find that the air conditioning inside the bus had circulated the air within the bus and because of that the spread became more evident.
“The investigations suggest that, in closed environments with air recirculation, SARS-CoV-2 is a highly transmissible pathogen,” they said.
The latest study does have a significant role in the public health. Now the measures should be altered in a way that the virus spread through air could also be reduced.
“Our finding of potential airborne transmission has important public health significance.” They said.