With all the precautions regarding the spread of COVID-19, there has been a lot of discussion about how best to prevent the virus from spreading to others. This is especially important for vulnerable people who are likely to have a more severe case of COVID-19 or even die from it. There are some things that we know can make a difference.
Wearing a mask may be one of the most important things we can do to avoid spreading the virus, says a research article recently published in Science magazine. Researchers continue to identify aerosolized (or “airborne”) respiratory droplets as culprits for the transmission of the illness.
Apparently, the size of the droplets matter. Larger, heavier droplets tend to settle on surfaces faster but remain wet longer, leaving viable viral particles on surfaces. This can lead to contact transmission, such as when someone touches the surface with a hand and then touches her face.
Smaller particles, such as those that are exhaled during talking and breathing, tend to stay in the air longer and evaporate faster than larger droplets. The problem with this is that they can be in the air for longer periods of time. They can also be dispersed over farther distances on air currents or re-circulated through air-conditioning systems.
Smaller droplets may cause more severe illness because they can be inhaled far deeper into the lungs, where viral shedding (the beginning of the illness) can begin to occur well before the person has symptoms.1
The take-home message is this: wear a mask. Mask wearing helps you keep your respiratory droplets to yourself. This means that, for every person who may not be symptomatic but possibly shedding viral particles, masks catch those droplets before they can enter the air. This reduces the amount of virus in the air and on surfaces that could potentially infect other people.
To read the full text of the article, click below. Feel free to share this article with friends and family members and send them to this blog site for more helpful information on this topic and many others.
Reducing transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19)
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6498/1422.full
- Kimberly A. Prather, Chia C. Wang, and Robert T. Schooley, “Reducing Transmission of SARS-CoV-2,” Science 368, no. 6498 (2020): pp. 1422-1424, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abc6197.
