The coronavirus is evolving to spread better through the air, researchers at the University of Maryland said in Clinical Infectious Diseases.
American doctors have described the evolution of the coronavirus. As noted by the researchers, those infected with the alpha strain (the strain caused a surge in the number of patients in the UK in January 2021) breathe out 100 times more virus into the air than those who caught the original Wuhan variant of COVID-19. The “alpha” strain of SARS-CoV-2 was 18 times more infectious than other strains before it
From May 2020 to April 2021, biologists studied data from 49 people infected with “alpha” and earlier strains of the virus. All volunteers had no symptoms, or were ill with a mild coronavirus. The researchers focused on analyzing the quality of air exhaled by patients in a special apparatus Gesundheit-II. They were asked to breathe for 30 minutes with a mask and the same without a mask. The amount of virus exhaled by patients with “alpha” was 43-100 times higher than that of other strains.
According to scientists, the “delta” is probably even more adapted for “travel” in the air. Lead author Dr. Don Milton believes wearing personal protective equipment is essential: Cloth or medical masks halve the risk of COVID-19 infection. He urged companies to ventilate and decontaminate workplaces.
Earlier, British doctors called the Indian strain of the coronavirus the most dangerous and infectious. According to them, the risk of hospitalization with infection with the Indian strain of COVID-19 (“delta”) is twice as high as with the infection with the British strain (“alpha”).
