Two studies published late last week in Clinical Infectious Diseases highlight the role of airborne spread of COVID-19 and the importance of efficient ventilation systems.
One study found that patients can exhale millions of viral RNA particles per hour in the early stages of disease, and the second tied an outbreak affecting 81% of residents and 50% of healthcare workers at a Dutch nursing home to inadequate ventilation.In the first study, researchers in China analyzed exhaled breath samples from 49 COVID-19 patients from 10 countries, 4 hospitalized patients without COVID-19, and 15 healthy people from Beijing using reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction.