Does COVID-19 Spread Through Droplets Alone?

摘要

The world is in the middle of a historic public health crisis. As of March 30, 2020, over athird of the population in the United States were under “stay at home” orders given by stategovernors to protect the vulnerable and the unexposed. Unprecedented steps have been takenby governments globally to contain the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a rapidlyspreading pandemic. This has resulted in more than 690,000 cases and over 33,000 deathsworldwide (Supplementary Table 1). The index case of the disease, caused by the Severe AcuteRespiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) was identified more than 3 months ago. Sincethen, public health authorities worldwide have taken aggressive measures to blunt the exponentialspread of this coronavirus. Furthermore, several nations, including Italy, Spain, and France, haveimposed nationwide lockdown measures to enforce social distancing to further prevent the spreadof COVID-19 in their respective countries.