Home

“COVID-19 is a new disease and we are still learning about how it spreads” according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) [source]

In general, respiratory virus infection can occur through: [source]

• contact (direct or indirect)
• droplet spray in short range transmission
• aerosol in long-range transmission (airborne transmission)

Close Contact (6 feet, 1.8 meters) and Respiratory Droplets

“The virus is thought to spread mainly from person-to-person.

• Between people who are in close contact with one another (within about 6 feet)
• Through respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs, sneezes or talks” [source]

This idea, that large droplets of virus-laden mucus are the primary mode of transmission, guides the US CDC’s advice to maintain at least a 6-foot distance: “Maintaining good social distance (about 6 feet) is very important in preventing the spread of COVID-19” [source]

Is 6 feet enough?

Some experts contacted by LiveScience think that 6 feet (1.8 meters) is not enough [source]

Air Currents

“Larger respiratory droplets (>5 μm) remain in the air for only a short time and travel only short distances, generally <1 m” (less than 3.3 feet) [source] [source] [source]

“Virus-laden small (<5 μm) aerosolized droplets can remain in the air and travel long distances, >1 m” (more than 3.3 feet) [source] [source]

A study of transmission occurring in a restaurant between people at a distance above 1 meter, observed that “strong airflow from the air conditioner could have propagated droplets” [source]

Humidity (best if between 50% and 80%)

“It is assumed that temperature and humidity modulate the viability of viruses by affecting the properties of viral surface proteins and lipid membrane” [source] Relative humidity (RH, or Saturation Ratio: the state of vapor equilibrium in room air) affects all infectious droplets with respiratory viruses, independent of their source (respiratory tract or aerosolized from any fluid) and location (in air or settled on surfaces). Relative humidity therefore affects all transmission ways but has the most pronounced effect on airborne transmission. [source]

“Measurements of indoor humidities in 40 residential apartments in New York (19) and in 6 high-quality commercial buildings in the Midwest (20) showed indoor vapor pressure of below 10 mb or indoor RH of below 24% in the winter” [source]

Experiments conducted in a study indicated “a striking correlation of the stability of winter viruses at low RH (20–50%), while the stability of summer or all-year viruses enhanced at higher RH (80%)” [source]

Airborne Transmission

The WHO states that “Respiratory infections can be transmitted through droplets of different sizes: when the droplet particles are >5-10 μm in diameter they are referred to as respiratory droplets, and when they are <5μm in diameter, they are referred to as droplet nuclei. According to current evidence, COVID-19 virus is primarily transmitted between people through respiratory droplets and contact routes” [source]

The WHO defines airborne transmission as “the spread of an infectious agent caused by the dissemination of droplet nuclei that remain infectious when suspended in air over long distances and time” [source]

Air Distance: up to 4 meters (13 feet) might be possible (in hospitals)

“The maximum transmission distance of SARS-CoV-2 aerosol might be 4 m” (13.1 feet), according to a study published on April 10 on Emerging Infectious Diseases, a journal of the US CDC which also found that “SARS-CoV-2 was widely distributed in the air and on object surfaces in both the ICU and general ward (GW), implying a potentially high infection risk for medical staff and other close contacts” [source]

This is true in a hospital setting and doesn’t necessarily apply to other settings. The WHO says that “in the context of COVID-19, airborne transmission may be possible in specific circumstances and settings in which procedures or support treatments that generate aerosols are performed; i.e., endotracheal intubation, bronchoscopy, open suctioning, administration of nebulized treatment, manual ventilation before intubation, turning the patient to the prone position, disconnecting the patient from the ventilator, non-invasive positive-pressure ventilation, tracheostomy, and cardiopulmonary resuscitation” [source]

And concludes that “further studies are needed to determine whether it is possible to detect COVID-19 virus in air samples from patient rooms where no procedures or support treatments that generate aerosols are ongoing” [source]

Air Duration: up to 3 hours (but not in normal conditions, according to WHO)

Virus can remain viable “in aerosols up to 3 hours” found a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine on March 17 [source]

The WHO notes that these findings need to be interpreted carefully: “in this experimental study, aerosols were generated using a three-jet Collison nebulizer and fed into a Goldberg drum under controlled laboratory conditions. This is a high-powered machine that does not reflect normal human cough conditions. Further, the finding of COVID-19 virus in aerosol particles up to 3 hours does not reflect a clinical setting in which aerosol-generating procedures are performed – that is, this was an experimentally induced aerosol-generating procedure” [source]

Objects and Surfaces

The virus could spread by touching an object or surface with virus present from an infected person, and then touching the mouth, nose or eyes.

Surface contamination as observed in the study cited above [source]:

• Computer mouse (ICU 6/8, 75%; GW 1/5, 20%)
• Trash cans (ICU 3/5, 60%; GW 0/8)
• Sickbed handrails (ICU 6/14, 42.9%; GW 0/12)
• Doorknobs (GW 1/12, 8.3%)

76.5% of all personal items sampled at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) were determined to be positive for SARS-CoV-2 [source]

Of these samples, 81.3% of the miscellaneous personal items were positive by PCR, which included:

• Exercise equipment
• Medical equipment (spirometer, pulse oximeter, nasal cannula)
• PC and iPads
• Reading glassesOther findings:
• Cellular phones (83.3% positive for viral RNA)
• Remote controls for in-room TVs (64.7% percent positive)
• Toilets (81.0% positive)
• Room surfaces (80.4% of all sampled)
• Bedside tables and bed rails (75.0%)
• Window ledges (81.8%)

Duration of contamination on objects and surfaces

Although the virus titer was greatly reduced, viable SARS-CoV-2 was measured for this length of time:

• Plastic: up to 2-3 days
• Stainless Steel: up to 2-3 days
• Cardboard: up to 1 day
• Copper: up to 4 hours

[source]

Floor

“The rate of positivity was relatively high for floor swab samples (ICU 7/10, 70%; GW 2/13, 15.4%), perhaps because of gravity and air flow causing most virus droplets to float to the ground.

In addition, as medical staff walk around the ward, the virus can be tracked all over the floor, as indicated by the 100% rate of positivity from the floor in the pharmacy, where there were no patients.

Furthermore, half of the samples from the soles of the ICU medical staff shoes tested positive. Therefore, the soles of medical staff shoes might function as carriers. The 3 weak positive results from the floor of dressing room 4 might also arise from these carriers. We highly recommend that persons disinfect shoe soles before walking out of wards containing COVID-19 patients.” [source] – From Worldmeter.

Can you catch coronavirus from food?

Is that pizza delivery safe? The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is telling us that ‘currently there is no evidence of food or food packaging being associated with transmission of COVID-19.’ SARS-CoV-2 cannot survive for extended periods on surfaces. The level of virus decreases over time, unlike bacteria that can multiply on surfaces, including food.

Supermarket food, or that delivery food, comes in a package of some sort. That packaging material is a surface that technically could be infected with COVID-19 if an infected person sneezed or coughed onto it. It’s, therefore, a good idea to wash your hands if you’ve been handling food packaging from an outside source. Even in more normal times, the food we eat is produced to a high standard that aims to eliminate foodborne pathogens.

People that work in the food industry are trained and aware of good practices for food safety.Most food we eat is cooked in some way. The cooking process for most food would kill the virus. Plus, the stomach is extremely acidic, so if a virus made its way there on the food you eat, it’s unlikely to survive.

Can you catch coronavirus from blood?

Countless diseases can be spread through blood and blood products. Thankfully, in common with other respiratory diseases, COVID-19 does not seem to be one of them.

There have been no reported cases of blood transfusion-transmitted coronavirus. Researchers and medical teams are now considering using plasma extracted from the blood of COVID-19 survivors to treat current patients.

The take-home message

Researchers still have much to learn about COVID-19 and how it is transmitted.

The best advice, for now, is to carry out good hygiene practices, including proper hand washing.

Atif Kubursi

Professor Emeritus of Economics, McMaster University

It’s hard to believe that the price of any commodity, let alone oil, can dip into negative territory. But that’s just what’s happened to oil prices.

COVID-19 has prompted lockdowns, shuttered factories and stopped people from travelling. The global economy is contracting.

The pandemic has also reduced global demand for oil by about 29 million barrels a day from about 100 million a year ago. OPEC and other producers agreed to cut production by 9.7 million barrels a day, far less than the decrease in demand, leaving a huge surplus of oil on the market and no buyers.

Storage capacity on land has filled up quickly. Many oil-importing countries have stored large quantities of oil, taking advantage of cheap prices that may not last.

Some oil producers, hoping to maintain their market share, have taken to storing their excess oil at sea, leasing tankers at high costs. Some are believed to be paying in excess of US$100,000 per day for each tanker.

Oil prices will come back up

So how have Alberta oil prices and even future prices for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) slipped into negative territory?

It starts with the futures’ contracts for WTI — oil to be delivered in a few months at today’s price. It lost US$6 a barrel on Monday, fetching US$11.66, but ended the day at -US$37 as holders of future contracts tried to dump their contracts before oil is actually delivered with nowhere to store it.

But Alberta oil, primarily derived from oilsands (referred to as Western Select), typically sells at US$10 to US$15 below the price of WTI, because it has to be extracted from deep rocky terrain. That makes it harder to refine, and it also has to be transported thousands of kilometres to American refineries.

And so Alberta oil prices have become negative in the sense that the benchmark price is now lower than the cost of production, transport and storage.

This state of affairs cannot be expected to last for long. Producers, in the short term, may accept prices below their variable cost as long as they are able to pay some of the costs they will incur even if oil production shuts down.

As time passes, more and more rigs will stop operating (technically, a few will be kept operational in order to avoid being compromised) and a new balance between supply and demand will be established at prices that exceed total average cost. But this doesn’t bode well for either Alberta or the United States.

Collateral damage

Alberta oil is now the collateral damage of the oil war between Russia and Saudi Arabia, with COVID-19 launching an additional attack. Either of these two factors could have disrupted Alberta’s oil production. But the Saudi-Russia hostilities combined with the global pandemic have proven to be catastrophic for Canada, and could have a similar outcome for the U.S. energy industry.

Russia and Saudi Arabia depend heavily on their oil revenues to sustain their economies. Of course, Saudi Arabia’s economy is less diversified than the Russian economy, but both share a similar distortion, where oil revenues represent a very high share of their GDPs (Saudi Arabia about 50 per cent, Russia 38.9 per cent), budgets (Saudi Arabia 87 per cent and Russia 68 per cent) and exports (Saudi Arabia 90 per cent and Russia 59 per cent. It’s difficult to believe that either country can do with such low prices.

Russia needs a price of US$60 a barrel to balance its government budget and even a higher price to balance its current account, meaning exports of goods and services minus imports of goods and services, plus net short-term capital transfers.

Saudis also need a much higher oil price

Saudi Arabia, which remains the lowest-cost oil producer in the world, can make money when the price per barrel exceeds US$20, and Russia can at a price of US$40.

But making a profit when prices are higher than cost is not sufficient. Saudi Arabia needs an US$80-per-barrel price to balance its budget, realize its plans to diversify its economy and sustain a heavily subsidized economy. In the balance is the stability of both the Russian and Saudi Arabian political systems and current regimes.

The longer the COVID-19 pandemic lasts, the greater the damage oil producers will endure. It’s hard to tell now how high oil prices will rise once the pandemic subsides. They will likely go higher as marginal producers are eliminated, but not for long. Using oil and other fossil fuels is no longer consistent with avoiding the expected disasters of climate change. Oil is increasingly becoming a stranded asset.

From : The Conversation

Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia Director, HRW

As the Nepali government and international donors respond to the coronavirus crisis, they should not repeat the failings made after the 2015 earthquake. Five years ago, donors committed over $4 billion to the humanitarian response following the earthquake, but reports have claimed that corruption, inefficiency, and the marginalization of vulnerable communities, including Dalits and indigenous groups, left millions in desperate need and deprived of their basic rights.

Covid-19 poses huge challenges to policy makers. A rights respecting approach will help ensure that the most vulnerable are not overlooked again or – even worse – victimized twice: first by the crisis and then by the response.

Already there are allegations of corruption in the procurement of medical supplies to combat the pandemic. There are reports that food prices are being manipulated, depriving farmers of their income while consumers struggle to feed themselves. And millions of Nepalis who rely on daily wages from informal work suddenly have no income, and are facing an acute crisis due to the lockdown. Many such workers are stranded hundreds of kilometers from home.

This week, one woman died and others were injured when police in the southern district of Saptari attacked people who were trying to buy food during the lockdown. A social worker in southern Nepal told Human Rights Watch that farmers are playing “cat and mouse” with the police just to harvest their winter crops, even though the government has withdrawn its earlier order which banned farmers from going to their fields.

Nepal’s donor partners are providing help. The International Monetary Fund has offered debt relief, while the World Bank and Asian Development Bank are negotiating multi-million dollar support packages. Bilateral donors have also announced grants to help Nepal respond to the pandemic.

Nepal needs support, yes, but the government also needs to uphold its citizens’ basic rights such as the right to food. For their part, donors should learn from the past, and ensure their support reaches those who really need it. They should demand that all of Nepal’s aid spending is transparent and goes through a competitive procurement system.  The government should also open its accounts to an independent auditor, and ensure that any corruption is properly investigated and prosecuted.