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A woman in China indirectly infected 71 others with the coronavirus after once using the elevator alone in an apartment building. This is evident from a report by the American Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The 25-year-old woman had returned from the United States to China’s Heilongjiang Province on March 19. The woman had no symptoms of Covid-19, but was asked as a precaution to put herself in isolation at home. She did and the woman had no contact with others. However, it turned out that months later she had indirectly infected 71 people.
Disastrous
The guilty? The elevator. After all, the woman had used the apartment building’s communal lift, and was found to be infected with the coronavirus after previous tests for antibodies had proved negative. However, it was a so-called asymptomatic carrier, which according to the researchers probably left virus particles on certain surfaces in the lift.
The result was disastrous. Before the woman’s return from the US, no corona infections had been detected in the region since March 11, and suddenly there were nearly 100. Shortly after the woman took the elevator, a neighbor from the apartment building also took advantage of it. He became infected without knowing it, then infected his mother and her boyfriend, who were staying with them on March 26. The mother and her boyfriend went to a party three days later, where an attendee suffered a stroke and was taken to hospital.
Superverspreider
During the hospitalization of the party-goer with the stroke, another 28 people became infected. Five nurses, a doctor and a hospital employee also showed symptoms. Later, the sick man was taken to a second hospital, where he infected another 20 others.
The neighbor of the neighbor’s mother, who was infected by the latter, did not develop symptoms until April 7 and was tested. He was the first to test positive from the cluster of infections of the super spreader – the 25-year-old woman. Afterwards several people with whom the man came in contact were also tested positive.
Surfaces or aerosols?
The story revives fears about surface contamination. After all, studies have shown that the Covid-19 virus can survive for two to three days on plastic or metal surfaces. However, that is in ideal lab conditions, and even there the infectivity would disappear after seven hours. On smooth surfaces and objects such as door handles, railings and tables, the virus would survive on average about three hours.
According to New Jersey Medical School microbiologist Emanuel Goldman, the chance of transmission through surfaces is very small. That’s what he said in The Lancet. More dangerous is the case where an infected person coughs or sneezes on the surface, and someone else touches that surface within one to two hours afterwards.
However, many scientists are convinced that aerosols – microscopic droplets of saliva – may be bigger culprits. They accuse the World Health Organization (WHO) of not recognizing the risk of aerosols. Aerosols can linger in the air longer and travel longer distances, making many measures inadequate. Badly ventilated rooms are then risky.
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