Linsey Marr, an environmental engineer at Virginia Tech and an expert on airborne transmission of viruses, said some people happen to be especially good at exhaling fine material, producing 1,000 times more than others. With three-quarters of the choir members testing positive for the virus or showing symptoms of infection, the outbreak would be considered a “super-spreading event,” he said. “One could imagine that really trying to project your voice would also project more droplets and aerosols,” he said. One of the authors of that study, Jamie Lloyd-Smith, a UCLA infectious disease researcher, said it’s possible that the forceful breathing action of singing dispersed viral particles in the church room that were widely inhaled. The World Health Organization has downplayed the possibility of transmission in aerosols, stressing that the virus is spread through much larger “respiratory droplets,” which are emitted when an infected person coughs or sneezes and quickly fall to a surface.īut a study published March 17 in the New England Journal of Medicine found that when the virus was suspended in a mist under laboratory conditions it remained “viable and infectious” for three hours - though researchers have said that time period would probably be no more than a half-hour in real-world conditions. A few helped themselves to mandarins that had been put out on a table in back.Įxperts said the choir outbreak is consistent with a growing body of evidence that the virus can be transmitted through aerosols - particles smaller than 5 micrometers that can float in the air for minutes or longer. Some members helped set up or remove folding chairs. Los Angeles Times’ visual coverage of the coronavirus crisisĮverybody came with their own sheet music and avoided direct physical contact.
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