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. 2020 Aug 28:ciaa1283. doi: 10.1093/cid/ciaa1283

COVID-19 patients in earlier stages exhaled millions of SARS-CoV-2 per hour

Jianxin Ma 1,#, Xiao Qi 1, Haoxuan Chen 2, Xinyue Li 2, Zheng Zhang 1, Haibin Wang 1, Lingli Sun 1, Lu Zhang 2, Jiazhen Guo 3, Lidia Morawska 4, Sergey A Grinshpun 5, Pratim Biswas 6, Richard C Flagan 7, Maosheng Yao 2,#,✉
PMCID: PMC7499537  PMID: 32857833

Abstract

Exhaled breath samples had the highest positive rate (26.9%, n=52), followed by surface swabs (5.4%, n=242), and air samples (3.8%, n=26). COVID-19 patients recruited in Beijing exhaled millions of SARS-CoV-2 RNA copies into the air per hour. Exhaled breath emission may play an important role in the COVID-19 transmission.

Keywords: COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, Exhaled breath, Airborne transmission

Articles from Clinical Infectious Diseases: An Official Publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America are provided here courtesy of Oxford University Press

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