Dealerships Opening - Stay Away - 6 Feet Is Not Far Enough - NIH Video

Two new studies on the airborne spread of saliva droplets, which can harbor virus particles from respiratory diseases like COVID-19, suggest those 6 feet alone are not always enough.

Using laser light scattering, a team at the NIH’s National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), found that loud speech produces thousands of saliva droplets per second, and those droplets can linger in enclosed spaces for up to 14 minutes. Using computational modeling, a team at the University of Nicosia in Cyprus found that a mild cough outside in a light breeze can carry droplets up to 18 feet away.

“Two meters does not suffice if you are in an open space,” says Dimitris Drikakis, senior author of the second study, published today in the journal Physics of Fluids, and a professor at the University of Nicosia, Cyprus, studying computational fluid dynamics. “Two meters is okay if there is no wind or very little, but beyond that situation, saliva droplets can travel a considerable distance.”