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Fox News reported on the results of a new study that showed that the coronavirus may be transmittable through the air.
The University of Nebraska Medical Center joined the National Strategic Research Institute at the University of Nebraska in a study of the air inside and outside rooms containing patients that tested positive for the coronavirus.
Without being able to confirm whether the coronavirus could be spread through the air, they were able to state that they found genetic material from the virus that causes COVID-19 inside patients’ rooms as well as in the air just outside of their rooms.
The researchers were able to support the claim that they found “limited evidence that some potential for airborne transmission exists,”.
Fox News continued with further coverage of the research being done in Nebraska.
Researchers, looking to better understand viral shedding and how it related to the novel virus, took air and surface samples from 11 patients’ rooms during the initial isolation of 13 people who tested positive for COVID-19. The researchers found virus genetic material on commonly used items such as toilets, but also in air samples, thus indicating that “SARS-CoV-2 is widely disseminated in the environment.” SARS-CoV-2 is the name of the virus that causes COVID-19.
Not only was the virus detected within COVID-19 patients’ rooms, “air samplers from hallways outside of rooms where [the] staff was moving in and out of doors were also positive,” they wrote.
“These findings indicate that disease might be spread through both direct (droplet and person-to-person) as well as indirect contact (contaminated objects and airborne transmission) and suggests airborne isolation precautions could be appropriate,” they concluded, noting that the findings also suggest that COVID-19 patients, even those who are only mildly ill, “may create aerosols of virus and contaminate surfaces that may pose a risk for transmission.”
The study’s authors also said that the results underscore the importance of personal protective equipment or PPEs, and the use of negative air pressure rooms for confirmed COVID-19 patients.
“Our team was already taking airborne precautions with the initial patients we cared for,” said James Lawler, an infectious diseases expert and director of the Global Center for Health Security at UNMC, in a statement. “This report reinforces our suspicions. It’s why we have maintained COVID patients in rooms equipped with negative airflow and will continue to make efforts to do so — even with an increase in the number of patients. Our health care workers providing care will be equipped with the appropriate level of personal protective equipment. Obviously, more research is required to be able to characterize environmental risk.”
This is a continuous effort across all crafts to develop new strategies to treat patients and to protect the healthcare workers while they struggle to manage an overwhelming number of patients in this pandemic.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has declared that the coronavirus spreads through water droplets emitted from the respiratory system by way of coughing and sneezing. These water droplets that contain the virus are touched by anther person walking by or through a shared object, which leads to a new person touching their eyes or breathing it in and becoming infected themselves.
The Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University and the Wuhan Institute of Virology of the Chinese Academy of Science reported through China’s state media that their researchers found traces of the coronavirus in the fecal tract of patients that tested positive for the coronavirus.
