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The COVID-19 pandemic is largely caused by airborne transmission, aphenomenon that rapidly gained the attention of the scientific community.Social distancing is of paramount importance to limit the spread of thedisease, but to design social distancing rules on a scientific basis theprocess of dispersal of virus-containing respiratory droplets must beunderstood. Here, we demonstrate that available knowledge is largely inadequateto make predictions on the reach of infectious droplets emitted during a coughand on their infectious potential. We follow the position and evaporation ofthousands of respiratory droplets by massive state-of-the-art numericalsimulations of the airflow caused by a typical cough. We find that differentinitial distributions of droplet size taken from literature and differentambient relative humidity lead to opposite conclusions: (1) most vs none of theviral content settles in the first 1-2 m; (2) viruses are carried entirely ondry nuclei vs on liquid droplets; (3) small droplets travel less than 2.5m vsmore than 7.5m. We point to two key issues that need to be addressed urgentlyin order to provide a scientific foundation to social distancing rules: (I1) acareful characterisation of the initial distribution of droplet sizes; (I2) theinfectious potential of viruses carried on dry nuclei vs liquid droplets.

Fluid dynamics of COVID-19 airborne infection suggests urgent data for a scientific design of social distancing