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On the airborne aspect of COVID-19 coronovirus

Popular Physics 2020-04-22 v1 Biological Physics Fluid Dynamics Medical Physics

Abstract

It is a widely accepted view that COVID 19 is either transmitted via surface contamination or via close contact of an un-infected person with an infected person. Surface contamination usually happens when infected water droplets from exhalation/sneeze/cough of COVID sick person settle on nearby surfaces. To curb this, social distancing and good hand hygiene advise is advocated by World health Organization (WHO). We argue that COVID 19 coronovirus can also be airborne in a puff cloud loaded with infected droplets generated by COVID sick person. An elementary calculation shows that a 5 μm5~\mu m respiratory infected droplet can remain suspended for about 9.0 minutes and a 2 μm2~\mu m droplet can remain suspended for about an hour! And social distancing advise of 3 feet by WHO and 6 feet by CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) may not be sufficient in some circumstances as discussed in the text.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2004.10082,
  title  = {On the airborne aspect of COVID-19 coronovirus},
  author = {Navinder Singh and Manpreet Kaur},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2004.10082},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

6 pages and 1 figure