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Weather impact on airborne coronavirus survival

The contribution of this paper toward understanding of airborne coronavirus survival is twofold: We develop new theoretical correlations for the unsteady evaporation of coronavirus (CoV) contaminated saliva droplets. Furthermore, we implement the new correlations in a three-dimensional multiphase Eu...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Dbouk, Talib, Drikakis, Dimitris
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: AIP Publishing LLC 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7513827/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32982135
http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/5.0024272
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author Dbouk, Talib
Drikakis, Dimitris
author_facet Dbouk, Talib
Drikakis, Dimitris
author_sort Dbouk, Talib
collection PubMed
description The contribution of this paper toward understanding of airborne coronavirus survival is twofold: We develop new theoretical correlations for the unsteady evaporation of coronavirus (CoV) contaminated saliva droplets. Furthermore, we implement the new correlations in a three-dimensional multiphase Eulerian–Lagrangian computational fluid dynamics solver to study the effects of weather conditions on airborne virus transmission. The new theory introduces a thermal history kernel and provides transient Nusselt (Nu) and Sherwood (Sh) numbers as a function of the Reynolds (Re), Prandtl (Pr), and Schmidt numbers (Sc). For the first time, these new correlations take into account the mixture properties due to the concentration of CoV particles in a saliva droplet. We show that the steady-state relationships induce significant errors and must not be applied in unsteady saliva droplet evaporation. The classical theory introduces substantial deviations in Nu and Sh values when increasing the Reynolds number defined at the droplet scale. The effects of relative humidity, temperature, and wind speed on the transport and viability of CoV in a cloud of airborne saliva droplets are also examined. The results reveal that a significant reduction of virus viability occurs when both high temperature and low relative humidity occur. The droplet cloud’s traveled distance and concentration remain significant at any temperature if the relative humidity is high, which is in contradiction with what was previously believed by many epidemiologists. The above could explain the increase in CoV cases in many crowded cities around the middle of July (e.g., Delhi), where both high temperature and high relative humidity values were recorded one month earlier (during June). Moreover, it creates a crucial alert for the possibility of a second wave of the pandemic in the coming autumn and winter seasons when low temperatures and high wind speeds will increase airborne virus survival and transmission.
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spelling pubmed-75138272020-09-24 Weather impact on airborne coronavirus survival Dbouk, Talib Drikakis, Dimitris Phys Fluids (1994) ARTICLES The contribution of this paper toward understanding of airborne coronavirus survival is twofold: We develop new theoretical correlations for the unsteady evaporation of coronavirus (CoV) contaminated saliva droplets. Furthermore, we implement the new correlations in a three-dimensional multiphase Eulerian–Lagrangian computational fluid dynamics solver to study the effects of weather conditions on airborne virus transmission. The new theory introduces a thermal history kernel and provides transient Nusselt (Nu) and Sherwood (Sh) numbers as a function of the Reynolds (Re), Prandtl (Pr), and Schmidt numbers (Sc). For the first time, these new correlations take into account the mixture properties due to the concentration of CoV particles in a saliva droplet. We show that the steady-state relationships induce significant errors and must not be applied in unsteady saliva droplet evaporation. The classical theory introduces substantial deviations in Nu and Sh values when increasing the Reynolds number defined at the droplet scale. The effects of relative humidity, temperature, and wind speed on the transport and viability of CoV in a cloud of airborne saliva droplets are also examined. The results reveal that a significant reduction of virus viability occurs when both high temperature and low relative humidity occur. The droplet cloud’s traveled distance and concentration remain significant at any temperature if the relative humidity is high, which is in contradiction with what was previously believed by many epidemiologists. The above could explain the increase in CoV cases in many crowded cities around the middle of July (e.g., Delhi), where both high temperature and high relative humidity values were recorded one month earlier (during June). Moreover, it creates a crucial alert for the possibility of a second wave of the pandemic in the coming autumn and winter seasons when low temperatures and high wind speeds will increase airborne virus survival and transmission. AIP Publishing LLC 2020-09-01 /pmc/articles/PMC7513827/ /pubmed/32982135 http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/5.0024272 Text en Copyright © 2020 Author(s) Published under license by AIP Publishing. 1070-6631/2020/32(9)/093312/13/$30.00 All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle ARTICLES
Dbouk, Talib
Drikakis, Dimitris
Weather impact on airborne coronavirus survival
title Weather impact on airborne coronavirus survival
title_full Weather impact on airborne coronavirus survival
title_fullStr Weather impact on airborne coronavirus survival
title_full_unstemmed Weather impact on airborne coronavirus survival
title_short Weather impact on airborne coronavirus survival
title_sort weather impact on airborne coronavirus survival
topic ARTICLES
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7513827/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32982135
http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/5.0024272
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