A group of Italian scientists confirmed the presence of the coronavirus responsible for Covid-19 in air pollution particles in an industrial area in northern Italy, which may indicate for the first time the possibility of the virus being transported by air through the air particles. .
on one study still under review, whose preliminary version can already be consulted publicly, the team led by researcher Leonardo Setti, from the University of Bologna, claims to have identified the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in air samples collected over three weeks in an industrial area in the province of Bergamoin northern Italy.
“This is the first preliminary evidence that SARS-CoV-2 RNA may be present in suspended particles, which suggests that, under conditions of atmospheric stability and large concentrations of suspended particles, SARS-CoV-2 may create agglomerates with the particles and, by reducing their diffusion coefficient, increase the persistence of the virus in the atmosphere“, Explain the researchers.
The authors of the study point out that the conclusions are still preliminary and need further investigation to understand how the virus survives suspended with the particles – and how this reality, to be confirmed, relates to the progression of the Covid-19 outbreak.
The British newspaper The Guardian, researcher Leonardo Setti highlighted the importance of continuing to investigate this possibility. “I am a scientist and I am worried when I don’t know. If we know, we can find a solution. But if we don’t know, we can only suffer the consequences“Said Setti.
In theoretical hypothesis published prior to the release of these results, the same researchers had suggested the possibility of greater exposure of the population of northern Italy – a more industrialized region – to particles suspended in the air having been responsible for a greater incidence of Covid-19 in that part of the country .
The possibility that the virus could be transmitted by particles suspended in polluted air is directly related to the way in which the virus itself is transmitted, and the World Health Organization has already repeated that it it is not transmitted by air. In other words, SARS-CoV-2 is only transmitted by droplets expelled by infected people, not being suspended in the air – information that can now be called into question by these new studies.
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