What sizes of droplets contribute to long-range airborne transmission?

The size range of respiratory droplets contributing to long-range airborne transmission of infections determines the targeted intervention methods. However, the exact size range remains unknown, and the influencing parameters are also undetermined. Here, we investigated the size-resolved transport and fate of respiratory droplets in four reported venues of COVID-19 outbreaks. We utilised a transient number balance model, a set of expired droplet size distributions, existing formulas for size-resolved settling rates and filtration efficiencies, and a deposition model from the International Commission on Radiological Protection. This enabled us to obtain the size-resolved concentrations of exhaled droplets in indoor air, the size-resolved number of droplet nuclei in the inhaled air, and the number of droplets deposited throughout the respiratory tract. The newly defined airborne transmission size range of expired droplets depends on the effective dilution flow rate of the infection venue under consideration. Three criteria were proposed for determining the sizes of droplets involved in long-range airborne transmission. The airborne transmission droplets typically featured an initial diameter of 0.1–4–6 µm, with an hourly volume generation rate of 0.38–0.42 nL/h per index case in the four venues. This newly estimated volume of airborne transmission droplets provides an essential input into the viral load method for estimating the infectious quanta generation rate.

Practical significance

Our size-resolved estimation reveals that only a tiny fraction of expired infectious droplets within an airborne transmission size range survives after the removal effects of ventilation, settling, deactivation, and filtration, as well as the transient dilution effect. These droplets remain in indoor air, potentially contributing to long-range airborne transmission. The airborne transmission size range depends on the size-dependent dilution capacity of a room.