COVID-19 and Aerosols
Aerosols containing SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, may be exhaled during respiratory activities, produced by aerosol generating procedures in clinical practice, or resuspended from contaminated surfaces, subsequently resulting in transmission of the virus between infected and susceptible individuals. The need to understand the role of and minimize aerosol transmission during the COVID-19 pandemic has driven research into multiple facets of infectious aerosol disease transmission. These include studies on the properties of aerosols when generated by speaking, breathing, singing and coughing; the environmental factors that govern the survival, dispersion and transport of the virus while airborne; and the effectiveness of mitigation strategies such as face coverings and ventilation. In this collection of articles, we bring together many of the contributions from the aerosol science community published in AS&T that have addressed the sources, transport and mitigation of viral containing aerosols.
The collection image shows a transmission electron micrograph of a section of a Vero cell (grey) with SARS-CoV-2 (blue capsid, yellow surface proteins) inside a vesicle (green). Magnification: 260,000X. Image courtesy of DHS S&T.