The virus that causes COVID-19 spreads through the air. But just how much virus people breathe out over the course of infection isn’t well-defined.
On average, participants breathed out 80 copies per minute for a full eight days after symptoms began, the team reports September 8 in a preprint posted at medRxiv.org. Only after that point did the viral particles drop to nearly undetectable levels.
Lane, of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, and colleagues still need to confirm what percentage of that exhaled viral RNA comes from viruses that can still replicate in another person’s body. And scientists don’t yet know how much virus is required for infection.
But, based on the new data, the team estimates that a high shedder could potentially exhale enough virus to infect someone in a closed space in about 20 seconds, making even elevator rides risky. With an average shedder, infection could take a little under four minutes.
2023-09-25 08:00:00
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