COVID SCIENTISTS CONFIRM VIRUS SPREADS IN THE AIR

Skeptics of the notion that the coronavirus spreads through the air — including many expert advisers to the World Health Organization — have held out for one missing piece of evidence: proof that floating respiratory droplets called aerosols contain live virus and not just fragments of genetic material.

Now a team of virologists and aerosol scientists has produced exactly that: confirmation of infectious virus in the air. “This is what people have been clamoring for,” said Linsey Marr, an expert in airborne spread of viruses who was not involved in the work. “It’s unambiguous evidence that there is infectious virus in aerosols.”

A research team at the University of Florida succeeded in isolating live virus from aerosols collected at a distance of 7 to 16 feet from patients hospitalized with COVID-19 — farther than the

6 feet recommended in guidelines.

The findings, posted online last week, have not yet been vetted by peer review but have already caused something of a stir among scientists. “If this isn’t a smoking gun, then I don’t know what is,” Marr tweeted last week.

But some experts said it still was not clear that the amount of virus recovered was sufficient to cause infection.

“I’m just not sure that these numbers are high enough to cause an infection in somebody,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University in New York.

“The only conclusion I can take from this paper is you can culture viable virus out of the air,” she said. “But that’s not a small thing.”