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. 2021 Aug 27;373(6558):eabd9149. doi: 10.1126/science.abd9149

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Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY).

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Phases involved in airborne transmission of respiratory viruses. — Virus-laden aerosols (<100 I1/4m) are first generated by an infected individual through expiratory activities, through which they are exhaled and transported in the environment. They may be inhaled by a potential host to initiate a new infection, provided that they remain infectious. In contrast to droplets (>100 I1/4m), aerosols can linger in air for hours and travel beyond 1 to 2 m from the infected individual who exhales them, causing new infections at both short and long ranges.

CREDIT: N. CARY/SCIENCE