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The current pandemic has shown how viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 can be shed while breathing, coughing, or sneezing, even when wearing a mask. Now, a new study using guinea pigs hints at an additional transmission mechanism: the animals spread influenza to their neighbors via airborne dust, dander, and fur, and the vast majority of airborne particulates emitted from the guinea pigs came not from their breath, but from dust they kicked up, the authors reported August 18 in Nature Communications. The experiments did not assess whether the coronavirus can be transmitted similarly.
“It’s really shocking to most virologists and epidemiologists that airborne dust, rather than expiratory droplets, can carry influenza virus capable of infecting animals,” William Ristenpart, a chemical engineer at the University of California, Davis, and a coauthor on the study, says in a press release. “The implicit assumption is always that airborne transmission occurs ...
