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Likelihood of survival of coronavirus in a respiratory droplet deposited on a solid surface
Rajneesh Bhardwaj1, Amit Agrawal1
1Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai 400076, India.
Abstract:
We predict and analyze the drying time of respiratory droplets from a COVID-19 infected subject, which is a crucial time to infect another subject. Drying of the droplet is predicted by using a diffusion-limited evaporation model for a sessile droplet placed on a partially wetted surface with a pinned contact line. The variation in droplet volume, contact angle, ambient temperature, and humidity are considered. We analyze the chances of the survival of the virus present in the droplet based on the lifetime of the droplets under several conditions and find that the chances of the survival of the virus are strongly affected by each of these parameters. The magnitude of shear stress inside the droplet computed using the model is not large enough to obliterate the virus. We also explore the relationship between the drying time of a droplet and the growth rate of the spread of COVID-19 in five different cities and find that they are weakly correlated.
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