How Far Does the Air You Exhale When Coughing Travel? (Video)

Staying at home. Washing your hands frequently using soap and water. Keeping a reasonable distance from other people. Coughing and sneezing while covering your mouth, either with the inside of your elbow or in a similar way. These are essential prevention measures against the advance of COVID-19, but there are many people out there who do not fully visualize their benefits. Today we will focus on the distance that air and particles travel when breathing and coughing, whether freely or with basic protection measures.

337 thousand infected. More than 14 thousand dead. Exponential growth of patients in several regions. Collapsed health systems. COVID-19 has known how to take advantage of every single one of our weaknesses, from technical deficiencies to the natural stupidity of current leaders. But nobody intends to give up, even if that requires explaining each of the recommendations that experts have published.

For example, the fact of flattening the curve and staying at home is necessary to avoid overwhelming hospitals and other care spaces, so that their limited resources can be allocated to the most critical cases. Then there is hand washing with soap, a superior option to alcohol gel since it has the ability to physically displace the virus. Finally, we come to maintaining a prudent distance and covering our mouths when coughing or sneezing, preferably with the inside of the elbow. Why? Here is the answer:

The video was published by the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and shows us the movement of air (and potentially our microparticles/microdroplets) under six different conditions: normal breathing, coughing without restrictions, coughing covering your hand, coughing into the bend of your elbow, coughing with a dust mask, and coughing with a surgical mask. Although the methodology used here may have certain deficiencies, the result is graphic enough to reach some conclusions.

First, coughing while covering your mouth with your hand has a much lower effect than we initially imagined. Then, using the inside of your elbow is not a perfect process either, but it is the one that offers the greatest restriction without additional accessories. And in the last frame, the surgical mask proves to be effective... because that's what it was designed for: The main objective of the mask is to protect others.

Source (in German): Bauhaus-Universität Weimar