Nhà nghiên cứu NUS phát minh thiết bị thu hút hơi thở

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been thought to spread primarily when an infected person coughs or sneezes, but little is known about its transmissibility through activities such as breathing, talking and singing.

A new study led by researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS), and conducted at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID), revealed that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) particles can be aerosolised by an infected person during talking and singing. They also found that fine aerosols (less than 5 micrometres, or μm) generated from these two types of activities contain more viral particles than coarse aerosols (more than 5 μm). The researchers concluded that fine respiratory aerosols may play a significant role in SARS-CoV-2 transmission, especially in an indoor environment, and hence, should be taken into consideration when planning infection prevention measures.

“While previous studies have established the relative amount of aerosols (or the amount of particles) produced through similar activities, they did not measure the amount of SARS-CoV-2 virus particles generated. To our knowledge, this is the first study to quantify and compare SARS-CoV-2 particles in aerosols generated through breathing, talking and singing. Therefore, our team’s work provides a foundation for estimating the risk of transmission of infection,” said project leader Associate Professor Tham Kwok Wai, who is from the Department of the Built Environment at the NUS School of Design and Environment.

The study was first published online in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases on 6 August 2021. Within a day of its publication, the paper was ranked among the top 5 per cent of all research outputs scored by data science company Altmetric, and was given one of the highest attention score after different factors, like the relative reach from social media sites, blogs, policy documents, and more, were taken into account.

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