Researchers who study the physics of fluids are learning why certain situations increase the risk that droplets will transmit diseases like COVID-19.
At the 73rd Annual Meeting of the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics, the scientists offered new evidence showing why it’s dangerous to meet indoors—especially if it’s cold and humid, and even if you’re more than six feet away from other people. They suggested which masks will catch the most infectious droplets. And they provided new tools for measuring super-spreaders.
“Present epidemiological models for infectious respiratory diseases do not account for the underlying flow physics of disease transmission,” said University of Toronto engineering professor Swetaprovo Chaudhuri, one of the researchers.