Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Jun;582(7813):557-560.
doi: 10.1038/s41586-020-2271-3. Epub 2020 Apr 27.

Aerodynamic analysis of SARS-CoV-2 in two Wuhan hospitals

Yuan Liu #  1 , Zhi Ning #  2 , Yu Chen #  3 , Ming Guo #  1 , Yingle Liu  1 , Nirmal Kumar Gali  4 , Li Sun  4 , Yusen Duan  5 , Jing Cai  6 , Dane Westerdahl  4 , Xinjin Liu  1 , Ke Xu  1 , Kin-Fai Ho  7 , Haidong Kan  8 , Qingyan Fu  9 , Ke Lan  10
Affiliations

Aerodynamic analysis of SARS-CoV-2 in two Wuhan hospitals

Yuan Liu et al. Nature. 2020 Jun.

Abstract

The ongoing outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has spread rapidly on a global scale. Although it is clear that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is transmitted through human respiratory droplets and direct contact, the potential for aerosol transmission is poorly understood1-3. Here we investigated the aerodynamic nature of SARS-CoV-2 by measuring viral RNA in aerosols in different areas of two Wuhan hospitals during the outbreak of COVID-19 in February and March 2020. The concentration of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in aerosols that was detected in isolation wards and ventilated patient rooms was very low, but it was higher in the toilet areas used by the patients. Levels of airborne SARS-CoV-2 RNA in the most public areas was undetectable, except in two areas that were prone to crowding; this increase was possibly due to individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2 in the crowd. We found that some medical staff areas initially had high concentrations of viral RNA with aerosol size distributions that showed peaks in the submicrometre and/or supermicrometre regions; however, these levels were reduced to undetectable levels after implementation of rigorous sanitization procedures. Although we have not established the infectivity of the virus detected in these hospital areas, we propose that SARS-CoV-2 may have the potential to be transmitted through aerosols. Our results indicate that room ventilation, open space, sanitization of protective apparel, and proper use and disinfection of toilet areas can effectively limit the concentration of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in aerosols. Future work should explore the infectivity of aerosolized virus.

PubMed Disclaimer

Comment in

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD). How COVID-19 spreads https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/about/transmission.html (2020).
    1. Offord, C. How COVID-19 is spread. The Scientist https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/how-covid-19-is-spread-67143 (21 February 2020).
    1. WHO Report of the WHO-China Joint Mission on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-china-joint-mis... (2020).
    1. Coronaviridae Study Group of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses. The species Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus: classifying 2019-nCoV and naming it SARS-CoV-2. Nat. Microbiol. 5, 536–544 (2020). - DOI
    1. Chen, L. et al. RNA based mNGS approach identifies a novel human coronavirus from two individual pneumonia cases in 2019 Wuhan outbreak. Emerg. Microbes Infect. 9, 313–319 (2020). - DOI

Publication types

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources