Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day one and
Speaker 1: eighty four since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Today's
Speaker 1: main story. Scientists are learning more about how long the
Speaker 1: virus lingers in all kinds of places, from face masks
Speaker 1: to concrete sidewalks. They're also testing what weather conditions it
Speaker 1: likes best. Their findings could indicate we're in for a
Speaker 1: frightening winter. But first, here's what happened in virus news today.
Speaker 1: The newest COVID nineteen vaccine candidate to start human testing
Speaker 1: is the first where volunteers won't get a painful injection. Instead,
Speaker 1: they'll receive a spray through the nose. This week, China
Speaker 1: approved phase one human testing for a nasal spray vaccine
Speaker 1: developed by researchers at Jaman University, Hong Kong University, and
Speaker 1: vaccine maker Beijing one tie Biological Pharmacy Enterprise Intranasal spray
Speaker 1: is recommended for children as well as adults who want
Speaker 1: to avoid the more common needle injection. Scientists around the
Speaker 1: world are working on sprays as an alternative to muscle
Speaker 1: jabs for all sorts of vaccines. In the UK coronavirus
Speaker 1: is spreading exponentially again for the first time in months.
Speaker 1: It's prompting government representatives to urge the public to limit
Speaker 1: social activities. The government believes the so called R rate,
Speaker 1: the number of people that one infected person will pass
Speaker 1: the virus onto, is somewhere between one and one point two.
Speaker 1: It was last above one in March. A separate study
Speaker 1: by Imperial College found the virus is now doubling every
Speaker 1: seven to eight days. Finally, Discount clothing stores Century twenty
Speaker 1: one is the latest retail industry casualty of the virus,
Speaker 1: but the New York chain says it should have survived
Speaker 1: the pandemic because it had business interruption insurance. Instead, insurers
Speaker 1: refuse to pay, and Century twenty one is shutting down
Speaker 1: after almost sixty years in business. More than one thousand
Speaker 1: companies have found themselves in the same predicament and have sued,
Speaker 1: with cases playing out across the US and the UK.
Speaker 1: Insurers are arguing they don't have to pay out on
Speaker 1: pandemic claims, in part because the coronavirus didn't damage property.
Speaker 1: And now for today's main story, we're constantly learning about
Speaker 1: the stars Covey two virus, what it does to the
Speaker 1: human body, how it spreads, and why it seems to
Speaker 1: transmit more readily in certain situations compared with others. Knowing
Speaker 1: how long the virus lives under different conditions is crucial
Speaker 1: for understanding the drivers of transmission and how to stop it.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Senior editor Jason Gale spoke with a scientist looking
Speaker 1: into some of these critical questions, and his answers don't
Speaker 1: bode well for winter in the northern hemisphere. Don't do
Speaker 1: you can Rist is the Regents Distinguished Professor at Kansas
Speaker 1: State University in Manhattan, Kansas. He's a German born veterinarian
Speaker 1: who's been studying viruses since the nineteen eighties when the
Speaker 1: pandemic hit. You're gonna on his team. We're trying to
Speaker 1: understand how a deadly pig virus could spread through a
Speaker 1: feed mill under various climatic conditions. We just finished a
Speaker 1: beautiful feet experiment and a feed mill, and we could.
Speaker 1: They told us stop, so you can change tech and
Speaker 1: got his team working on SASKOV two. Instead. They looked
Speaker 1: at how long the coronavirus can survive on a dozen
Speaker 1: different surfaces and in different weather They used an incubator
Speaker 1: to mimic the typical indoor environment as well as average
Speaker 1: weather conditions in the fall and in the summer, and
Speaker 1: so I as a virologist, I never thought I would
Speaker 1: go to a to the National Weather Service website and
Speaker 1: look up all these data for a city like ours,
Speaker 1: which is in the middle of the middle of the
Speaker 1: United States. Against team work with live coronavirus particles in
Speaker 1: a hermetically sealed bio containment lab to study weather affects.
Speaker 1: And then we tested the stuff city of sauce coos
Speaker 1: to on different surfaces, different steel surfaces, cardboard, plastics, and
Speaker 1: mass tivas, you name it. I think twelve different surfaces, cloths,
Speaker 1: the t shirts we bought, um and so on. And
Speaker 1: then we look what is the difference if you have
Speaker 1: a summer condition versus a spring condition, and the difference
Speaker 1: was significant. The measurement that Yogan's group focused on was
Speaker 1: the viruses biological half life, that's the time it takes
Speaker 1: for half of the virus particles or very once to die.
Speaker 1: The found that in summer the virus disintegrates and inactivates
Speaker 1: much faster. The results were released ahead of publication and
Speaker 1: peer review at the end of August, the house life
Speaker 1: is much shorter than in spring and fall. Now we
Speaker 1: are coming to the fault condition soon and the virus
Speaker 1: will stay stay around longer, and it will survive longer
Speaker 1: under these fault conditions on the same surf fish. I
Speaker 1: was surprised at our masks. The tiwex were on the top,
Speaker 1: and that's what we were all day. Is a synthetic
Speaker 1: polyethylene material that's used to make a lot of personal
Speaker 1: protective equipment. So for the time act, we had thirty
Speaker 1: one point eight hours half life in spring and fall,
Speaker 1: and in summer it was only four point six hours.
Speaker 1: Significant the sas COVT virus survived on the protective material
Speaker 1: almost seven times longer under fall conditions than summer. On
Speaker 1: ninety respirator masks, which are more protective than surgical masks,
Speaker 1: the virus survived for twenty seven point eight hours in
Speaker 1: cooler conditions versus four point four hours in summer. That's
Speaker 1: more than six times longer. And now we continue with
Speaker 1: the winter condition, and I believe it's worse than we
Speaker 1: saw the same or even worse than we saw with
Speaker 1: conditions so um and that's important for the epidemiologist and
Speaker 1: you know the people. Because we have to understand how
Speaker 1: long the virus survives in different environment and if the
Speaker 1: virus survives in a winter environment longer than the summer environment,
Speaker 1: we already know the infectious The pressure is higher in
Speaker 1: these under the under winter conditions compared to summer conditions,
Speaker 1: and vice versa. We had some famous predictions earlier in
Speaker 1: the pandemic that the virus would miraculously disappear in the
Speaker 1: Northern Hemisphere spring. Five months later, the virus is still
Speaker 1: infecting tens of thousands of people each day. That doesn't
Speaker 1: bode well for what might happen when the temperature and
Speaker 1: humidity drop and people are back gathering indoors. So if
Speaker 1: we couldn't control it very well during the summer, we
Speaker 1: are in for a big surprise. And now we go
Speaker 1: continue these studies not only in surfaces, but on biologic
Speaker 1: fluids and certain body fluids, tears, nasal secretions, alive, you're
Speaker 1: in feces, what what what is an environmental virus like
Speaker 1: and what is an environment the virus pussis like Youans
Speaker 1: group also study houseflies and their propensity to distribute the coronavirus.
Speaker 1: They'll examine whether these pesky insects that can flit from
Speaker 1: a soil tissue to let us leave to a mouth
Speaker 1: are capable of picking up infectious virus particles, and if so,
Speaker 1: how far and wide they can transport them? As gross
Speaker 1: as all these sounds that research will help us understand
Speaker 1: the coronavirus better and to inform policies and mitigation strategies
Speaker 1: that will prevent infections. What is virus niche? Where can
Speaker 1: they survive for a long time? And how can these
Speaker 1: this these niches play a role in the epidemiology and
Speaker 1: we are having cases where they don't know where it
Speaker 1: comes from because they were not in close contacts or
Speaker 1: what are the what the reasons for that? And we
Speaker 1: have to address that in a scientifically, well defined in
Speaker 1: in a well defined way, not just secually. And so
Speaker 1: we want to contribute a little bit to this kind
Speaker 1: of question which are critical for us to understand. The
Speaker 1: coronavirus has by no means given up all its secrets.
Speaker 1: So many mysteries remain. But with thousands of scientists around
Speaker 1: the world standing the way it spreads and mains, every day,
Speaker 1: we're gaining new clues and insights to help stop it.
Speaker 1: That was Jason Gale, and that's it for our show today.
Speaker 1: For coverage of the outbreak from one bureaus around the world,
Speaker 1: visit Bloomberg dot com slash Coronavirus and if you like
Speaker 1: the show, please leave us a review and a rating
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to
Speaker 1: help more listeners find our global reporting. Yeah. The Prognosis
Speaker 1: Alia edition is produced by Topher foreheads Jordan Gospoure, Magnus
Speaker 1: Hendrickson and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported
Speaker 1: by Jason Gale. Original music by Leo Cedrin. Our editors
Speaker 1: are Rick Shine and Francesca Levi. Francesca Levi is Bloomberg's
Speaker 1: head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.