You have to stay at home, can you go for a walk?

Surviving an outbreak of coronavirus is difficult to save yourself from a sense of danger. We have a sense of constant escape - it is difficult to free ourselves from fear of interpersonal contacts, and some are even afraid of walking. Is that right

At the initial stage of the coronavirus-causing epidemic of COVID-19, surface and air survival parameters typical of each other virus were adopted. Research, the results of which were published yesterday , confirm this. The stability of the SARS-CoV-2 virus under various conditions is similar to the original SARS virus.

So how do you report on the Internet that the virus clouds are flying in the air for hours? Let me explain.

First of all: every virus is small particles that we can't call an organism. They have no cellular structure, organelles, let alone organs. So we cannot say that a virus " floats" in the air longer than others - they have no wings or anything that would affect the time of "flying" in the air. They always float in some medium - e.g. liquid droplets. How quickly they fall to the surface depends on the external conditions and the size of these droplets.

In the study cited above, scientists from several institutions (including the US National Institute of Health and Princeton University) determined the survival of coronavirus in various conditions. What does the survival of something that does not have vital functions mean? It's about the activity of a certain number of cells, or the ability to infect. In practice, however, it is often determined in laboratory conditions whether virus cells were detectable.

The results were predictable: on surfaces of an inherently anti-bacterial nature (a copper surface was used for testing), the virus has the least chance of survival. It was not detected after three hours. On smooth surfaces (plastic and steel), it survived the longest: two days. In the case of cardboard (paper) up to 24 hours - which means that we should be careful about used tissues.

However, one of the results of the research, I am afraid that it will be misunderstood and incorrectly quoted, which will fuel panic.

This is the result of the survival of the virus in an aerosol, i.e. droplets of liquid dispersed in the air. It amounted to 3 hours in the Princeton study, which could lead to imaginations of the killer virus flying for hours in the air.

In fact, the aerosol environment is highly unstable under non-laboratory conditions. It disappears after a few seconds - it disperses and falls to the surface (and then the principles of survival on the surface come into effect). So how do scientists know about these few hours?

It's easy. In 1958, LJ Goldberg invented the so-called Goldberg drum - a rotating cylinder that artificially maintains the diffuse aerosol environment of the desired composition. Situations of this type are rare in the natural environment. Goldberg's drum is widely used by scientists - it was also used in the study mentioned above.

Coronavirus. Can you go for a walk?

We can freely walk in the woods and park. Let's not just go inside if we see something like this:

You have to stay at home, can you go for a walk?