Wednesday, September 2, 2020
A new study published Tuesday 1er September in the review JAMA Internal Medicine would confirm this hypothesis that Covid-19 could be transmitted through the air, in addition to the droplets emitted by carriers of the virus.
Contaminated people in a bus while they were far from the carrier of the virus
Last January in China, two buses traveled to the city of Ningbo for a 50-minute journey. Among the passengers of bus n ° 1 where no one was positive for Covid-19, none of the passengers was infected.
However, in coach no.2, a person in her sixties, positive for the coronavirus and asymptomatic, was seated between two other people. Of the 68 passengers on this bus, 23 were infected. The study reveals that people who are not near the infected person have been infected with the virus. She specifies that if the Covid-19 was transmitted only by the voice of droplets, only people sitting in the rows near the positive passenger, could have contracted the virus. In addition, the latter being asymptomatic, he did not cough, which reduces the risk of contamination by projection of droplets.
Air conditioning and poor ventilation are believed to be the cause
It is specified that the bus was poorly ventilated and that the air conditioning on, circulated the air inside the passenger compartment. According to the authors of this study, air conditioning would therefore have helped to circulate the virus in the bus. They conclude that “This investigation suggests that, in closed environments where air is recirculated, SARS-CoV-2 is a highly transmissible pathogen”.
This new study is therefore added to others going in the same direction and in particular to that of a restaurant in Canton in China where people were infected while eating at different tables. The restaurant in question also had poor air ventilation.
