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It’s hard to catch coronavirus when you’re outside? Apparently, it’s not as safe as it used to be. Festival, European soccer championship, religious gatherings: Recently, corona infections with the Delta virus mutation have been the result in high numbers even after outdoor events. But is that because of the fresh air?
“Delta is generally more contagious – that’s also true when you’re out in the fresh air,” said Society for Virology President Ralf Bartenschlager. “It was possible to become infected outdoors even with earlier variants, but the probability of it happening increases with delta,” the Heidelberg University expert explained.
Delta-infected people would have a viral load presumably increased by a factor of five compared to the predecessor variant Alpha (B.1.1.7). “The more virus present in an infected person, the greater the risk of transmission, even outdoors.”
Whether infection occurs, however, always depends on many other factors – outdoors, for example, on how closely people stand together. “It’s not possible to say across the board how quickly an infection can happen – it might take a minute or it might take an hour.”
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) said it had no changed assessment: On the website of the institute, it says that transmissions occur rarely overall in the outdoor area and have a small share of the total occurrence. If the minimum distance is maintained, the probability of transmission in outdoor areas is “very low” because of air movement.
However, the RKI recommends keeping a distance of at least one and a half meters and avoiding large gatherings of people, even outdoors, so that fewer droplets and aerosols are directly exposed.
However, aerosol expert Gerhard Scheuch continues to believe that people become infected indoors in particular. If the risk of infection actually increases outdoors, this would mean that this would be even more true for indoor areas.
At soccer matches and festivals in particular, many people share certain rooms, for example on the journey to the event, when staying overnight or in the toilets. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that many of the infections recorded in connection with open-air events may have taken place indoors.
- hp with reports from vienna.at and bild.de
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