how viruses like covid-19 spread write a aticels
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The global outbreak of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, is approaching the end of its second month amid widespread confusion among members of the public about how the virus is transmitted.
“There’s a massive amount of education that clearly hasn’t reached the public about this stuff,” says Ian Mackay, a public health virologist at the University of Queensland who helped develop diagnostics for COVID-19 in Australia. As is the case for many aspects of COVID-19 biology, “there are a lot of knowledge gaps out there in the community.”
With researchers around the world working to understand the pathology of the disease and slow its spread, The Scientist rounded up the latest on what is and isn’t known about how the virus is transmitted from person to person.
See “Follow the Coronavirus Outbreak”
The main route of transmission for COVID-19
Like the flu, COVID-19 is spread primarily via respiratory droplets—little blobs of liquid released as someone coughs, sneezes, or talks. Viruses contained in these droplets can infect other people via the eyes, nose, or mouth—either when they land directly on somebody’s face or when they’re transferred there by people touching their face with contaminated hands.
Because respiratory droplets are too heavy to remain suspended in the air, direct person-to-person transmission normally only happens when people are in close contact—within about six feet of each other, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It could also occur in a medical setting, if someone has to handle respiratory secretions such as saliva or mucus from an infected person.