Dry air and air-conditioned rooms can help spread the coronavirus, according to an Indian-German research team that looked at the role of relative humidity in the transmission of infections. In more humid rooms, virus droplets become heavier and fall faster in higher humidity, “providing less chances for other people to breathe in infectious viral droplets,” the team wrote, according to DW, a German news website. Dry air makes the droplets shrink and hang around, becoming what the scientists describe as an “optimal route” for transmission.
It's always something. Pretty soon, we'll all be wearing hazmat suits.
Given that here in the Pacific Northwest, COVID arrived during the rainy season when it's cool outside and nobody's running A/C from, say, early October through June, the research seems a little shaky to me. Around here, things don't really dry out until late June. Summer is July and August.
On a somewhat related note, my wife does educational training classes and was informed yesterday that one of the attendees last week was COVID-19 positive, and so she was exposed. She goes in for a test on Monday and is presently in quarantine. I imagine that everyone in that class was exposed as well. Small wonder that rates of COVID-19 are continuing to increase in the state.
