By Betsy Todd, MPH, RN, nurse epidemiologist and AJN clinical editor. Published: March 20. 

As we have become a little more comfortable with the concept of social distancing as a way to mitigate the spread of this new coronavirus, a new worry seemed to dominate conversations this week: the idea that the virus can linger in the air. The takeaway for many people, at least in the conversations I’ve been having, is that you can become infected by simply walking down the street. There is no evidence that this is true (unless, of course, someone sneezes in your face!).

Results of recent experiment deepen our understanding.

A March 17 research letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine reported on experiments in which SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was artificially aerosolized. (For comparisons, SARS-CoV-1, which causes SARS, was also aerosolized.) A nebulizer was used to aerosolize the virus, and the aerosol was fed into a rotating drum. The drum apparatus helps to keep the suspended aerosols from settling out of the air, so that their dynamics can be more closely studied.

Under these controlled conditions, the researchers were able to demonstrate that artificially aerosolized virus remained viable and infectious for three hours, and that therefore it’s “plausible” that, if something causes the virus to aerosolize outside of the lab, this could be another mode of […]