When is 6 feet not enough to avoid Covid-19 transmission? In light wind conditions

Airborne transmission of viruses, like the virus causing COVID-19, is not well understood, but a good baseline for study is a deeper understanding of how particles travel through the air when people cough.

In a paper published in Physics of Fluids, from AIP Publishing, Talib Dbouk and Dimitris Drikakis of University of Nicosia discovered that with even a slight breeze of 4 kph, saliva travels 18 feet in 5 seconds.

“The droplet cloud will affect both adults and children of different heights,” Drikakis said. “Shorter adults and children could be at higher risk if they are located within the trajectory of the traveling saliva droplets.”…