COVID-19 Particles Can Stay Inside An Elevator For 30 Mins, Shows Study
We tend to avoid crowded places and even elevators allow fewer individuals to travel at a particular time now.
With COVID-19 taking over our lives, all we¡¯ve been doing since the last nine months is to keep ourselves covered, and safe from contracting the novel coronavirus.
Whether it is staying locked indoors most of the days or maintaining social distancing when we step out, while wearing face masks at all times.
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We tend to avoid crowded places and even elevators allow fewer individuals to travel at a particular time now. However, now studies have shown that cough droplets in an elevator can last longer than earlier presumed, which can pose a COVID-19 risk.
Researchers from the University of Amsterdam looked at how aerosols that often contain respiratory droplets (one of the main elements to cause COVID-19 when released from an infected individual) travels in the closed confines of an elevator.
To recreate the aerosol droplets that are produced while coughing, they created a spray nozzle. They simulated the droplets in the presence of a laser in an actual elevator that illuminated the particles and tracked their movement.
Daniel Bonn, the lead researcher for the study explained, ¡°We found out that during such normal operation, it takes 12 to 18 minutes before the number of aerosol particles decreases by a factor of one hundred. When the elevator doors are permanently open, this time reduces to 2 to 4 minutes.¡±
Researchers explain that a COVID-19 positive individual can release between ten thousand and one billion copies of the virus per millilitre. One billion copies basically means one virus particle in each aerosol droplet.
Previous studies have also shown that speaking loudly or coughing without a mask can spread the aerosols farther and infect more people along the way. And in confined spaces with minimal ventilation, it only gets worse.
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Authors strongly urge people to leave elevator doors open for longer periods of time, to allow aerosols to exit, while also avoiding talking and coughing in the lift.
Study co-author Dr Cees van Rijn also highlights the need to better the ventilation system in the elevator, ¡°In most hospital elevators the ventilator is present in the ceiling and exhausts air from the cabin towards the elevator shaft. A possible measure is reversing the flow direction of the ventilator, creating a downflow of fresh air from the ceiling towards the floor of the elevator cabin. This can of course easily be prolonged by reprogramming the action control software.¡±
