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More bad news for the restaurant industry and its customers: Two diners at a restaurant in Jeonju, South Korea, were infected with the new coronavirus within minutes from a third customer, a woman who was asymptomatic and sat down. more than four meters from them.
After analyzing this case study in June, the researchers published the result in the Journal of Korean Medical Science, noting that the virus, under certain airflow conditions, travels more than 2 meters and can infect others in just five minutes. .
Droplet transmission “can occur at a distance of more than 2 meters if there is a direct flow of air from an infected person in an indoor environment”, the authors write. “Therefore, updated guidelines for quarantine and environmental management of COVID-19 are necessary until the approval of an effective treatment drug or vaccine,” write the six South Korean authors.
The study also suggests frequent ventilation of interior spaces or a ventilation system if natural ventilation is not possible. In addition, it proposes that the distance between tables in an indoor restaurant or cafeteria is greater than 1-2 meters, or alternatively the installation of a partition depending on the air flow. He advises clients to remove masks only during meals and to avoid talking during meals and especially loud talking or yelling.
In the long term, they say, the installation of separate compartments inside should be considered to avoid the transmission of infectious diseases transmitted by air and droplets.
In this outbreak, the distances between the person who transmitted the virus (customer B, a vendor outside of Jeonju) and others were 4.8 meters (customer C) and 6.5 meters (customer A), farther than other restaurant customers. but they weren’t in the flow of air conditioning. And it didn’t take long: Customer A, a high school student, spent five minutes and Customer C 21 minutes.
This study used the restaurant’s internal camera circuit as well as data from the South Korean pandemic model to identify the chain of transmission. “This is one of the first airborne tests,” say the authors.
South Korea, which is considered a model country because of the way it has stopped transmitting the virus, is facing the largest outbreak in history. On Saturday, 950 new cases were registered, when the previous record, in February, was 909. In total, 41,736 cases of coronavirus and 578 deaths were registered.
