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The discovery of coronavirus in the bathroom of an unemployed apartment in Guangzhou, China, suggests that the pathogen in the air would possibly have floated through drainage pipes, an echo of a primary SARS outbreak in Hong Kong 17 years ago.
In February, traces of SARS-CoV-2 were detected in the sink, faucet and shower of an apartment that was long empty, researchers from the China Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a study published this month on Environment International. The infected bathroom was directly above the home of five other people who a week earlier were affected by COVID-19.
Scientists conducted an “on-site tracer simulation experiment” to see if the virus can spread through drainage pipes through small debris in the air that can be created by force of a discharge. They discovered such debris, called aerosols, in the toilets at 10 and 12 degrees above the COVID-19 instances. Two instances were shown on those floors in early February, resulting in considerations that SARS-CoV-2-laden debris from the faeces reached their homes through the pipes.
The new report recalls one case in Hong Kong’s personal amoy Gardens subdivision nearly two decades ago, when 329 citizens with severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, in component due to faulty sewer lines. 42 citizens died, making it the most devastating network. SARS outbreak, also caused by a coronavirus.
“While shared elevator transmission cannot be ruled out, this time is consistent with findings from the SARS outbreak at Amoy Gardens in Hong Kong in 2003,” said Song Tang, scientist at the CDC’s Key Environment and Population Laboratory in China. Health and her colleagues wrote in the study, which cited unreleased knowledge from the fitness agency.
Components in multi-story buildings can be connected through a shared wastewater treatment system, said Lidia Morawska, director of the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health at Queensland University of Technology in Australia. the gases, detectable through their odor, rise infrequently through the pipes in the absence of enough water, said Morawska, who was not part of the study team.
“If there’s a smell, it means the air has been transported where it doesn’t go,” Morawska said in an interview.
SARS-CoV-2 is mainly transmitted through respiratory droplets: saliva splashes or nasal discharge, according to the World Health Organization. However, since the first weeks of the pandemic, Chinese scientists have stated that the infectious SARS-CoV-2 virus in the FAeces of PATIENTS with COVID-19 may also play a role in transmission. A February examination of 73 patients hospitalized for coronavirus in Guangdong province found that more than the part tested positive for the virus in the stool.
Previous has shown that rinsing can generate germ-laden aerosols from faeces, Chinese CDC scientists said. These debris can remain in the air for long periods of time and disperse over distances of more than 1 meter (3 feet), especially in confined and poorly ventilated spaces.
Fecal spraying occurred with SARS, and it is imaginable that it rarely occurs with SARS-CoV-2, depending on the sewer system, said Malik Peiris, director of virology at the University of Hong Kong School of Public Health. discovered lines of viruses, “which is not the same as an infectious virus,” he said. “But we have to keep that option in mind. “
In the case of Amoy Gardens, hot, moist air in a SARS patient’s bathroom that excretes “extremely high concentrations” of viruses in the stool and urine established a column in an air duct that spread the suspended virus to other apartments, according to research. .
Although toilets are a daily necessity, “they can herald the transmission of fecal aerosols if used improperly, especially in hospitals,” said Chinese CDC researchers, citing a fluid dynamics simulation that showed “massive upward delivery of particulate matter. of viral aerosols “flushing out, leading to the large-scale spread of the virus inside.
“The study uncovers great plausibility for air transmission and presents the evidence in detail,” said Raina MacIntyre, a professor of global biosecurity at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, who a member of a foreign team invited to collaborate with the Chinese CDC in examining.
The common restrooms were implicated in a SARS-CoV-2 infection that probably occurred on an evacuation flight from Milan to South Korea last March, researchers said in a report published in the Emerging Infectious Diseases journal of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But it’s not the first time
A 28-year-old woman developed symptoms of COVID-19 approximately one week after the flight, in which she wore an N95 respiratory mask, unless she used the toilet. inflamed but without symptoms. Due to strict infection control procedures implemented without delay before and flight, the authors concluded that the maximum credible explanation for the infection is that it was acquired through oblique contact with an asymptomatic passenger while using the vehicle on board bath.
Previous research has shown that SARS-CoV-2 genetics have been discovered in bathrooms used by patients with COVID-19, in the air of hospital nursing stations, in ventilation ducts and at various other sites. people with SARS-CoV-2 are not known, said Morawska of Queensland.
“There are many conditions in which things happen and are unusual,” said Morawska, who was part of a team that studied the contagion of Amoy’s gardens. Scientists want to investigate “unusual conditions” because, by understanding them, they would possibly have it located “not so unusual. “
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