Aerosol and Surface Transmission Potential of SARS-CoV-2
Mechanistic theory predicts the effects of temperature and humidity on inactivation of SARS-CoV-2 and other enveloped viruses
Dec 2020. *****!!!!!****!!!*** We find SARS-CoV-2 survives longest at low temperatures and extreme relative humidities; median estimated virus half-life is over 24 hours at 10 °C and 40 % RH, but approximately 1.5 hours at 27 °C and 65 % RH."
Humidity-Dependent Decay of Viruses, but Not Bacteria, in Aerosols and Droplets Follows Disinfection Kinetics | Environmental Science & Technology
***!!!!******!!!!!***** "We investigated the effects of RH on the viability of bacteria and viruses in both suspended aerosols and stationary droplets using traditional culture-based approaches. Results showed that viability of bacteria generally decreased with decreasing RH. Viruses survived well at RHs lower than 33% and at 100%, whereas their viability was reduced at intermediate RHs. We then explored the evaporation rate of droplets consisting of culture media and the resulting changes in solute concentrations over time; as water evaporates from the droplets, solutes such as sodium chloride in the media become more concentrated. Based on the results, we suggest that inactivation of bacteria is influenced by osmotic pressure resulting from elevated concentrations of salts as droplets evaporate. We propose that the inactivation of viruses is governed by the cumulative dose of solutes or the product of concentration and time, as in disinfection kinetics."
Characterization of airborne particles from cleaning sprays and their corresponding respiratory deposition fractions
"The total airborne mass fraction was between 2.7% and 32.2% of the mass emitted from the bottle, depending on the product. Between 0.0001% and 0.01% of the total airborne mass fraction consisted of residual particles. However, these particles had a mass median aerodynamic diameter between 1.9 µm and 3.7 µm, constituting a total respiratory deposition of up to 77%...Thus, the use of cleaning sprays can result in chemical airway exposure, with particles in the relevant size range for both nasal and alveolar deposition"
Factors determining the diffusion of COVID-19 and suggested strategy to prevent future accelerated viral infectivity similar to COVID
{Problems related to air pollution, climate, etc} Geo-environmental determinants of the accelerated diffusion of COVID-19 that is generating a high level of deaths. The second is to suggest a strategy to cope with future epidemic threats.
*Toward Understanding the Risk of Secondary Airborne Infection: Emission of Respirable Pathogens
(2005). {Includes other useful links} Toward Understanding the Risk of Secondary Airborne Infection: Emission of Respirable Pathogens. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene: Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 143-154.
Environment and COVID-19: Pollutants, impacts, dissemination, management and recommendations for facing future epidemic threats
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has become a global pandemic. Its relationship with environmental factors is an issue that has attracted the attention of scientists and governments. This article aims to deal with a possible association between COVID-19 ...
Aerosols, Droplets, and Airborne Spread: Everything you could possibly want to know - First10EM
A review of the scientific literature aimed at providing a better understanding of aerosols and droplets, and their importance in airborne spread of disease. "Even when a virus can be spread through airborne transmission, you are still much more likely to become ill as the result of close contact. If COVID-19 is transmitted similarly to influenza, we can be somewhat reassured by our current practices."
Particle sizes of infectious aerosols: implications for infection control
The global pandemic of COVID-19 has been associated with infections and deaths among
health-care workers. This Viewpoint of infectious aerosols is intended to inform appropriate
infection control measures to protect health-care workers. Studies of cough aerosols
and of exhaled breath from patients with various respiratory infections have shown
striking similarities in aerosol size distributions, with a predominance of pathogens
in small particles (
Impact of ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5) exposure on the risk of influenza-like-illness: a time-series analysis in Beijing, China
***"PM is small enough to suspend in the air for long periods of time, which may provide “condensation nuclei” to which virus droplets attach [45]. Many studies have also reported that PM induces both airway epithelial damage and barrier dysfunction, which could result in a temporary immunosuppressive pulmonary microenvironment " "PM2.5 had almost no effect on influenza incidence at the non-flu season" "when PM2.5 was beyond 70 μg/m3, the effect of PM2.5 had an increasing gradient as PM2.5 increased. Such pattern was clearly more substantial in the middle aged groups and tended to be most pronounced for age group 25–59" "virulence of influenza is expected to be stronger near zero than at subfreezing temperatures and a decrease in temperature makes airways more susceptible to the onset of respiratory infections"
Airborne infectious diseases ~ASHRAE POSITION STATEMENT
Includes analyses of effects of humidity on transmission
Viral infections acquired indoors through airborne, droplet or contact transmission
The vast majority of studies reviewed here concern hospital and other health facilities where viruses are a well-known cause of occupational and nosocomial infec-tions. Studies on other indoor environments, on the other hand, including homes, non-industrial workplaces and public buildings, are scarce. The lack of regulations, threshold values and standardized detection meth-ods for viruses in indoor environments, make both research and interpretation of results difficult in this field, hampering infection control efforts. Further research will be needed to achieve a better understanding of virus survival in aerosols and on surfaces, and to elucidate the relationship between viruses and indoor environmental characteristics.
CDC updates webpage on how covid-19 is spread after Website error last month - The Washington Post
The update officially acknowledges growing evidence that under certain conditions, people farther than six feet apart can become infected by tiny droplets and particles that float in the air for minutes and hours, and that they play a role in the pandemic.
Coronavirus can be transmitted through the air, CDC confirms - The Washington Post
Many of the sharpest increases per capita over the past week came in states like Wisconsin, Utah, Iowa and the Dakotas.
Mounting evidence suggests coronavirus is airborne — but health advice has not caught up
"People infected with SARS-CoV-2 exhaled 1,000–100,000 copies per minute of viral RNA, a marker of the pathogen’s presence. Because the volunteers simply breathed out, the viral RNA was probably carried in aerosols." "When researchers created aerosols of the new coronavirus, the aerosols remained infectious for at least 16 hours, and had greater infectivity than did those of the coronaviruses SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV." "No amount of ventilation could have reduced the risk to an acceptable level for the two-and-a-half-hour rehearsal, she says." "SARS-CoV-2 in mock saliva aerosols lost 90% of its viability in 6 minutes of exposure to summer sunlight, compared with 125 minutes in darkness."
Scientists Probe How Coronavirus Might Travel Through The Air ~NPR
April 2020
Airborne Viruses Can Spread on Dust, Nonrespiratory Particles | UC Davis
Influenza viruses can spread through the air on dust, fibers and other microscopic particles, according to new research from the University of California, Davis, and the Icahn School of Medicine at
Influenza A virus is transmissible via aerosolized fomites | Nature Communications
We provide evidence of a mode of transmission seldom considered for influenza: airborne virus transport on microscopic particles called “aerosolized fomites.” In the guinea pig model of influenza virus transmission, we show that the airborne particulates produced by infected animals are mainly non-respiratory in origin. Surprisingly, we find that an uninfected, virus-immune guinea pig whose body is contaminated with influenza virus can transmit the virus through the air to a susceptible partner in a separate cage. We further demonstrate that aerosolized fomites can be generated from inanimate objects, such as by manually rubbing a paper tissue contaminated with influenza virus. Our data suggest that aerosolized fomites may contribute to influenza virus transmission in animal models of human influenza, if not among humans themselves, with important but understudied implications for public health.