A study published in the 3/19/2020 issue ot the New England Journal of Medicine debunks the idea that the 6 foot rule for coronavirus distancing avoids communication of the coronavirus.
The study demonstrates that the droplets from a sneeze or cough, which can become an aerosol, can survive and be contagious for at least 3 hours, and circulate throughout a room or building.
In short, the 6 foot rule for coronavirus social distancing is dead.
This study compared the half-lives of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (a/k/a/ #Covid-19 ) and the SARS-CoV-1 virus in aerosol and on plastic, stainless steel, copper, and cardboard.
The most interesting finding related to social distancing is the length of time that the virus survives, after the droplets aerosolized by a sneeze or cough are suspended in the air as “fomites”. With a half-life of 66 minutes as an aerosol in the air, 12.5% of the Covid-19 virus “fomites” are still viable after 3 hours, which gives them plenty of time to circulate around a building through the ventilation system. While large droplets will fall to the ground relatively quickly, these aerosolized fomites will travel throughout a large area and in a building with central HVAC, will travel throughout the building.
The half-life of the virus on surfaces is remarkably longer: approximately 5.6 hours on stainless steel and 6.8 hours on plastic. By those measures, over 12% of the virus would be viable after a day.
Therefore, doorknobs, switches, buttons, keyboards, touch screens, and many other surfaces used by multiple people are media where the virus can easily spread between people, and which are unlikely to be sanitized between uses.
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