Viruses are infectious pathogens that cause disease. It takes nutrients from the cells of other living things (hosts) to maintain life. It is different from germs that breed inanimate beings.
So viruses cannot survive in the air for long. “The virus almost dies when it is released into the air,” said Lee Sang-won, head of the diagnosis management division at the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “The virus can only survive for three days at the most,” he said. There is another reason why viruses are difficult to live in the air. Viruses are weak in the light, especially, UV rays kill it. For this reason, it is extremely unlikely that the virus will spread in general space or outdoors solely through the air.
If you were in the same room as a patient with a virus infection, it was not carried on “air” but on “air secretions.” In other words, patients with infectious diseases carry saliva or runny nose. Lee Jae-kap, an infectious disease professor at Hallym University Hospital, said, “The fact that scientists say that there is no possibility of infection in the air is that there is a chance that the spray in the air (a secretion in which the patient splashes) can be infected. The spray cannot stay in the air for long, it can be only about one meter long.”
Viruses are classified according to their genetic form or parasites. Scientists believed there were six cases of coronavirus infection that infected not only animals but also humans. The new coronavirus (2019-nCoV) of Wuhan pneumonia is also known to have originated from animals (bats) and infected even humans, which has now increased to seven.
The possibility of an “airborne infection” is being mentioned in China, but Korean experts say the possibility is low. But we cannot rest assured. Some say that the infectious nature of Novel coronavirus itself is more powerful than other viruses.
Usually, the virus begins to transmit after symptoms appear. However, some highly contagious viruses are also transmitted when there are no symptoms of the host. In the case of Novel coronavirus, so-called “asymptomatic infection” has been appearing not only in China but also in Japan. This new strain of coronavirus could be much stronger than expected.
Still, experts note that no deaths of Novel coronavirus have been reported outside of China. Of course, while the number of infected people in other countries is much smaller than in China, it is a different aspect compared to the rapid increase in deaths in China. Although there are many speculations, if quarantine and intensive care are carried out well in the early stages, the chances of death will not be very high, according to the report.
