[ad_1]
Traces of coronavirus were found in the bathroom of an unoccupied apartment in Guangzhou, China. This suggests that the pathogen was carried through air and sewer pipes and is reminiscent of the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong 17 years ago, writes Bloomberg.
In February, traces of SARS-CoV-2 were detected in the sink, faucets and shower handle in an apartment where no one had lived for a long time, said Chinese researchers from the local Center for Disease Prevention and Control. The contaminated toilet is located above an apartment where five people lived, confirmed a week earlier with the Covid-19 infection.
The researchers conducted an experiment in which they tried to see if the virus can spread through water pipes through tiny water particles formed by drawing water. They noted that such particles, called aerosols, in bathrooms located 10 to 12 stories above the apartment where the sick lived.
A similar case occurred in Hong Kong in 2003, when 329 residents of a residential complex fell ill with SARS and were infected due to poor sewerage. 42 of the complex’s residents later died in the most devastating SARS outbreak in a small community.
The new coronavirus is mainly transmitted by droplets of saliva that are released from the mouth or nose during speech, breathing, coughing, or sneezing. A study conducted in February on 73 patients with Covid-19 showed, however, that more than half of them had detected traces of the virus in their feces.
Previous research has shown that running water down the toilet can generate aerosols from germs, and those particles can linger in the air for long periods and can spread over distances of more than a meter in closed, unventilated spaces.
