This man is putting pepper up his nose. Why? So he can sneeze. He is a volunteer in a study being conducted by scientists in Singapore who want to establish how the influenza virus is transmitted through the air. Cater their experiments are the specialized mirror and a high-speed camera which together can record density variations in gases. Virologis t, Dr. Julien Teng says the experiments could lead to new information to help doctors deal more effectively with viral outbreaks like the swine flu pandemic of 2009.
"During SARS and H5N1 and H1N1 pandemic, there is a lot of concerns about coughings, sneezing and whether we should wear masks,different types of masks extra,extra. But we realize that there is no basic knowledge, no basic information about how normal exhale flows actually have the potential to transmit infection. I mean the infections we are talking about are the air-borne infections."
According to the centers for disease control, influenza is primarily transmitted from person to person through sneezing or coughing, but little is known about how far a virus can travel through the air or whether it can be transmitted by other means, by laughing or crying perhaps, or simply breathing. Dr. Teng is looking for solid scientific data.
"What we try to get is a general idea of, OK, a cough will travel so far from most people but not be on the certain point from most people. OK, and that cough will have a certain amount of air from most people, so obviously we are not 100% correct. But if you can think about it and it's very hard to cough with no air coming out of your mouth.Because you can determine limits and boundaries of your data interpretation. And that's the same for all science. You know there are many cases where you can find exceptions but science doesn't stop because of that."
The study won't stop untill June, 2012. Dr. Teng hopes that by then he will have enough data to answer so many important questions. How much distance should seperate patients in a hospital? Who and how many passengers on an aircraft should be quarantined? How better can face masks be used? For Dr. Julien Teng, it's likely to take a great deal more coughing and sneezing to find out.
Rob Muir, Reuters.
