Is coronavirus airborne? SARS-CoV-2 detected on air pollution particles

Despite experts saying there was no evidence of coronavirus being airborne, it has been detected on particles of air pollution by scientists looking into whether the disease could be carried this way over long distances, a report in The Guardian said. Until now, the virus was believed not to be able to survive in the air. As such, there was little risk of people getting infected through the air.

So far, the World Health Organisation has maintained that coronavirus spreads primarily through droplets generated when an infected person coughs or sneezes, or through droplets of saliva or discharge from the nose.

For the preliminary study, the Italian scientists collected air pollution samples at one urban and one industrial site in Bergamo province and identified a gene highly specific to Covid-19 in multiple samples.

Leonardo Setti at the University of Bologna in Italy, who led the work, said it was important to investigate if the virus could be carried more widely by air pollution.

Setti’s team analysed that higher rates of infection in parts of northern Italy before the lockdown was imposed might be due to higher levels of particle pollution in the region.

Earlier too, studies have shown that air pollution particles harbour microbes and pollution is likely to have carried the viruses causing bird flu, measles and foot-and-mouth disease over considerable distances.

While large coronavirus-laden droplets from infected people’s coughs and sneezes fall to the ground within a metre or two, smaller droplets, less than 5 microns, can remain in the air for minutes to hours and travel further.

However, experts are not sure whether these tiny droplets can cause coronavirus even though the fact that it does survive in the air, even for a short time, could force scientists and health officials to reassess the risk to people, especially to health workers who spend a lot of time near an infected person.

Scientists, affiliated to different laboratories in universities in the United States, found in their experiments that the SARS-CoV-2 virus could survive in air for about three hours, although its ability to infect was severely weakened during this time.

“It is perhaps not surprising that while suspended in air, the small droplets could combine with background urban particles and be carried around,” The Guardian quoted Professor Jonathan Reid at Bristol University as saying. Reid said the virus had been detected in tiny droplets collected indoors in China.

Setti said tiny droplets between 0.1 and 1 micron might travel further when coalesced with pollution particles up to 10 microns than on their own. This is because the combined particle is larger and less dense than the droplet.

“The pollution particle is like a micro-airplane and the passengers are the droplets,” The Guardian quoted Setti as saying.

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Is Coronavirus Airborne? The Answer May Not Be So Simple

Six feet: You've heard that measurement everywhere by now—from officials at major health organizations like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization; on coronavirus-themed TV commercials; in literally every COVID-19 article circulating the internet. For the most part, we all know that, while we should be staying home, in those moments we have to go out into the world, we should maintain a 6-foot distance between ourselves and those around us.

That measurement—6 feet—isn't random; it's based on the idea that this novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV2, spreads through droplets of saliva or mucus that get ejected into the air whenever someone who has COVID-19 coughs or sneezes, says Glenn Randall, PhD, a microbiologist and virologist at the University of Chicago. The virus hitches a ride on these droplets, which fall to the ground or other surfaces within a 6-foot radius—thus the rule to keep our distance. (It's also why health officials strongly urge regular handwashing and not touching your face; those virus droplets can also contaminate commonly-touched surfaces, and sometimes stay there for a while.)

But the thing about the novel coronavirus is that it's new, meaning even the most in-the-weeds scientists and researchers didn't know about it until it first emerged in China in December 2019—and that means there's still a lot we don't know about it, since new research is emerging daily.

One of those things we aren't 100% sure about is whether or not the coronavirus could be airborne. As of right now, respiratory droplets seem like the most common way the virus is transmitted, according to officials. But researchers are currently exploring the possibility that this new coronavirus could, on some level, be airborne, too—and that may change both standards for healthcare professionals and recommendations for the general public.

What exactly does it mean for a virus to be airborne—and how is it different from virus droplets?

When we think of the word 'airborne' it's easy to assume that it means a virus that can be transmitted through the air at any point—which could technically even apply to those droplets associated with the novel coronavirus, since they travel through the air before they land. But the medical definition of airborne is a bit more specific, which can be confusing, says Dr. Randall.

Essentially, "airborne suggests the virus is no longer part of the droplet that falls to the ground and is literally part of the air we breathe," he adds. When something is airborne, it's actually in an aerosol form—a liquid or a solid suspended in gas. While most of us recognize the word 'aerosol' in terms of hairspray, in the case of a virus existing as an aerosol, it means the solid is the virus molecule, and the gas is the air that transports it.

The World Health Organization currently defines aerosol particles smaller than 5 microns in diameter, while droplet particles are technically larger than 5 microns in diameter. Using this information, a 2013 review article in the Journal of Pathogens explains airborne transmission further, defining it as "the transmission of particles that are comparatively smaller in size [than droplet particles] and thus can remain suspended in air for long periods of time." The review adds that, because of this, airborne particles "potentially expose a higher number of susceptible individuals as a much greater distance from the source of infection."

But some research even calls into question those aerosol and droplet particles—and whether the measurements are arbitrary in terms of coronavirus. A new analysis published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), postulates that the categories of large and small droplets aren't specific enough when referring to COVID-19 transmission.

"The rapid international spread of COVID-19 suggests that using arbitrary droplet size cutoffs may not accurately reflect what actually occurs with respiratory emissions," wrote Lydia Bourouiba, PhD, an associate professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies the fluid dynamics of disease transmission. This, she says, may lead to the virus traveling distances greater than 6 feet—instead, up to 23 to 27 feet.

Of course, not everyone agrees with Bourouiba's assessment—including one key voice on the topic: Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, and a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force was asked about the report’s key finding during the March 31 daily media briefing. He indicated that he was disturbed by the report, which he found to be “terribly misleading," adding that the forcefulness of a sneeze needed for this type of transmission is "not practical."

Is the coronavirus airborne or not?

Experts can't seem to definitively agree on this one—and even the general definition of "airborne" in terms of the coronavirus is up for debate. According to Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, the novel coronavirus is not airborne. He clarified that in a tweet shared on March 6, explaining, "[coronavirus] spreads from person to person through small droplets from the nose or mouth when a person with #COVID19 coughs or exhales."
It's a pretty direct statement, but while more research continues to be published on the topic, experts have begun to consider the possibility that the novel coronavirus could exist as an aerosol for airborne transmission.

A laboratory experiment published March 27 in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) provides the most robust evidence that the virus can remain in the air. A team at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease used a nebulizer, which creates aerosols from liquids, to spray COVID-19 molecules in the air as well as samples of the virus that caused the SARS epidemic in 2003. They report being able to detect the virus in the air for three hours. Both viruses dropped by half after 1.1 hours.

While this experiment proves that the virus can remain in the air, conditions in a lab don’t necessarily prove what is happening in the real world. For example, a nebulizer may not perfectly mimic a cough or sneeze.

To that point, research done in real-world environments has mixed results. For a study published in JAMA this month, researchers took samples from three patients in infection isolation rooms at the outbreak center in Singapore. Samples were collected for five days over two weeks, sometimes after rooms were cleaned and sometimes before. While the virus was found on some surfaces in patients’ rooms, it was never detected in the air.

Yet, two more studies (both shared on MedRxiv and BioRxiv, but currently preprint and not yet peer reviewed), did find some evidence that the virus could be airborne. In one, researchers from the University of Nebraska Medical Center collected samples from 11 isolation rooms and found some positive samples, indicating that the virus is shed into the air when an infected person coughs or sneezes, when they go to the bathroom, and when anyone touches a surface containing the coronavirus, thus stirring the particles up. (This also added more clout to the ability of the coronavirus, though rare, to spread via fecal transmission.)

In the other preprint study, conducted by researchers from Wuhan University, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and other institutes, 35 air samples were collected in both patient rooms and medical staff areas in hospitals in Wuhan, China during the COVID-19 outbreak. The researchers found only low concentrations of the virus in the air in patient rooms or in hallways, but higher concentrations in the air near patients’ toilets. This evidence, according to the Wuhan scientists, suggests that, “The virus aerosol...is a potential transmission pathway and effective sanitization is critical in minimizing aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2.”

Still, the WHO stands by their initial recommendations of droplet and contact precautions when it comes to COVID-19—and in a scientific brief shared on March 29, the organization stated that studies focusing on whether the coronavirus is actually airborne "need to be interpreted carefully."

The organization reiterates that the NEJM nebulizer study does not reflect real-world circumstances, and says that several preprint articles finding positive air samples in patient rooms may not be detecting viable virus (it's one thing for a virus to be detected in the air and on surfaces, it's another to determine whether the amount of virus detected is able to infect people). “As evidence emerges, it is important to know whether viable virus is found and what role it may play in transmission,” the organization says.

As of right now, the WHO is recommending airborne precautions only for healthcare workers or those in a healthcare setting. Some procedures done in hospitals can create aerosols of the virus, which is why it’s so vital for healthcare workers to have access to high-quality n95 masks, says Waleed Javaid, MD, Director of Infection Prevention and Control at Mount Sinai Downtown.

For the rest of us, the six foot rule is sufficient. If you want to take extra precautions (and because even the CDC and WHO are revisiting their mask recommendations for the general public), you can wear a homemade mask—but please leave the surgical masks and N95 respirators for the healthcare professionals.

The information in this story is accurate as of press time. However, as the situation surrounding COVID-19 continues to evolve, it's possible that some data have changed since publication. While Health is trying to keep our stories as up-to-date as possible, we also encourage readers to stay informed on news and recommendations for their own communities by using the CDC, WHO, and their local public health department as resources.

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Beware! You may be sipping microplastics with your cup of tea

Tea drinkers could be consuming more than they bargained for in their brew as a single plastic tea bag is estimated to shed billions of microplastic particles, a study has revealed.

A plastic tea bag releases about 11.6 billion microplastics and 3.1 billion smaller nano plastic particles when it is steeped into a cup of boiling water, said researchers from McGill University in Canada.

"The levels of nylon and polyethylene terephthalate particles released from the teabag packaging are several orders of magnitude higher than plastic loads previously reported in other foods," suggested the study.

The researchers called for more investigation into the health effects of microplastics -- less than 5mm, which are invisible to the naked eye.

Microplastics are widely found in the environment, in tap and bottled waters, as well as, food items. They are being consumed by humans for decades and there is no reliable information on adverse effects of plastic particles, particularly the nano-size particles on human health, according to a WHO report.

Calling for greater research, the report, however, argued the findings were based on "limited information" and there were "no studies on the impacts of ingested microplastics on human health".
Researcher said that the finding was a chance for consumers who are looking to reduce their plastic use to be more aware of their purchases.

"There is really no need to package tea in plastic, which contributes to you not just ingesting plastic but to the environmental burden of plastic," she said.

According to another research, an average person ingests about 50,000 particles of microplastic annually and between 74000 and 121000 when inhalation is considered.

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This New 10-Minute Test Detects Cancer Early Using Gold Particles

We talk a lot about preventive medicine, especially when it comes to cancer, which includes dietary  and life-style changes like managing stress and reducing environmental toxins. But that's only part of the cancer-combating equation. Early detection is essential, as it increases the chances of successful treatment, and scientists have been developing ways to detect cancer earlier in non-invasive ways—but a new discovery by researchers may be the most important to date.

Now, thanks to these Australian researchers, we have a way to identify cancerous cells using just a 10-minute test and any tissue sample (including a blood sample), according to their new study.

How does it work? All of our healthy cells contain patterns of molecules called methyl groups, which spread across the genome. In cancer cells, these methyl groups appear in dense clusters at certain locations, and when affected cells were put in water, it caused, "DNA fragments to fold into unique three-dimensional nanostructures that could easily be separated by sticking to solid surfaces such as gold," says one of the study authors.

The altered cell structure of the cancer cell found in the sample was drawn to gold particles, changing the color of the cell when they came in contact and allowing scientists to separate the cancer cells from the healthy cells.

So, while the method uses circulating cancer DNA in the blood, similar to a liquid biopsy, this detection method is novel because it's simple, less expensive than other testing methods, and has the potential to pair with a smartphone.

While the test has yet to be done on humans, the study reports 90% accuracy  after testing 200 human cancer samples and healthy DNA. "This unique nano-scaled DNA signature appeared in every type of breast cancer we examined, and in other forms of cancer including prostate, colorectal and lymphoma," the Dr. said in a statement.

The next step is to run large-scale clinical trials to determine just how early cancer can be detected. The researchers are already assessing whether other bodily fluids could be tested to detect cancers. These are cutting-edge discoveries, and we are standing by for what happens next.

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