Variation in Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Bioaerosol Production in Exhaled Breath

Renu Verma; Eugene Kim; Nicholas Degner; Katharine S Walter; Upinder Singh; Jason R Andrews

doi:10.1093/ofid/ofab600

Variation in Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Bioaerosol Production in Exhaled Breath

Open Forum Infect Dis. 2021 Dec 1;9(1):ofab600. doi: 10.1093/ofid/ofab600. eCollection 2022 Jan.

Authors

Renu Verma¹, Eugene Kim¹, Nicholas Degner¹, Katharine S Walter¹, Upinder Singh^{1

2}, Jason R Andrews¹

Affiliations

¹ Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA.
² Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA.

Abstract

We developed a simple, noninvasive mask sampling method to quantify and sequence severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) from exhaled breath. We found substantial variation between individuals in SARS-CoV-2 copies exhaled over a 15-minute period, which moderately correlated with nasal swab viral load. Talking was associated with a median of 2 log₁₀ greater exhaled viral copies. Exposure varies substantially between individuals but may be risk stratified by nasal swab viral load and whether the exposure involved conversation.

Keywords: COVID-19; exhaled breath; gelatin masks; infectiousness; whole-genome sequencing.