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Ventilation and the SARS-CoV-2 CoronavirusAnalysis of outbreaks in a restaurant and on a bus in China,and at a Call Center in South Korea

Birnir, B.

2020-09-13 infectious diseases
10.1101/2020.09.11.20192997 medRxiv
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In a previous paper [10] a model of the distribution of respiratory droplets and aerosols by Lagrangian turbulent air-flow was developed. It is used to show how the SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus can be spread by the breathing of single infected person. The model shows that the concentration of viruses in the cloud, exhaled by one person, can increase to infectious levels within a certain amount of time, in a confined space where the air re-circulates. In [10] the model was used to analyze the air-flow and SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus build-up in a restaurant in Guangzhou, China [23, 22]. In this paper, we add the analysis of two more cases, an outbreak among lay-Buddhists, on a bus [30], traveling to a ceremony in Zhejiang province, China, and an outbreak in a Call Center in Seoul, Korea [24]. The analysis and comparison of these three cases, leads to the conclusion that the SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus attacks in two steps: The first step is a linear spread between individuals with a couple of days delay. The second step is an polynomial spread effected by the air-conditioning system affecting a much larger number of people. Thus in the second step, the ventilation can become the super-spreader.

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