Aerosol emission from playing wind instruments and related COVID-19 infection risk during music performance
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Abstract
The pandemic of COVID-19 led to restrictions in all kinds of music activities. Airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 requires risk assessment of wind instrument playing in various situations. Previous studies focused on short-range transmission, whereas long-range transmission risk has not been assessed. The latter requires knowledge of aerosol emission rates from wind instrument playing. We measured aerosol concentrations in a hermetically closed chamber of 20 m 3 in an operating theatre as resulting from 20 min standardized wind instrument playing (19 flute, 11 oboe, 1 clarinet, 1 trumpet players). We calculated aerosol emission rates showing uniform distribution for both instrument groups. Aerosol emission from wind instrument playing ranged from 11 ± 288 particles/second (P/s) up to 2535 ± 195 P/s, expectation value ± uncertainty standard deviation. The analysis of aerosol particle size distributions shows that 70–80% of emitted particles had a size of 0.25–0.8 µm and thus are alveolar. Masking the bell with a surgical mask did not reduce aerosol emission. Aerosol emission rates were higher from wind instrument playing than from speaking or breathing. Differences between instrumental groups could not be found but high interindividual variance, as expressed by uniform distribution of aerosol emission rates. Our findings indicate that aerosol emission depends on physiological factors and playing techniques rather than on the type of instrument, in contrast to some previous studies. Based on our results, we present transmission risk calculations for long-range transmission of COVID-19 for three typical woodwind playing situations.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2021.12.08.21267466: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics IRB: All measurements were conducted with the approval of the relevant ethics committee of the University Medical Center of Greifswald (reference number BB 131/20) in accordance with the declaration of Helsinki.
Consent: Every participant gave informed written consent.Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources A fan and an air purifier with HEPA filter (high-efficiency particulate air H13, CARD 210 m3/h) accelerated the air exchange (see Figure 1). CARDsuggested: (CARD, RRID:SCR_016602)Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.
Results from Limi…SciScore for 10.1101/2021.12.08.21267466: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics IRB: All measurements were conducted with the approval of the relevant ethics committee of the University Medical Center of Greifswald (reference number BB 131/20) in accordance with the declaration of Helsinki.
Consent: Every participant gave informed written consent.Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources A fan and an air purifier with HEPA filter (high-efficiency particulate air H13, CARD 210 m3/h) accelerated the air exchange (see Figure 1). CARDsuggested: (CARD, RRID:SCR_016602)Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
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