IIT-Goa to research if Covid-19 is air-borne in India

Amid the nationwide lockdown due to COVID-19 pandemic, faculty members of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Goa from various departments are collaborating to calculate and predict the extent of respiratory droplets from human sneezing and coughing spread. As the COVID-19 pandemic is having huge impact on the world, definitive scientific data to this end is required. According to researchers, tiny droplets from an infected person may be present even after that person has left the room. The safe distance practice to be promoted will depend on the lifespan of the droplets as well as the extent of their spread.

At IIT Goa, researchers are studying the effect of atmospheric conditions through numerical and experimental approaches. It is used to define the spread and lifetime of the respiratory droplets. To study the evolution of the virus (liquid drop from sneezing and coughing) in air, Santosh Kumar Das from the Physics department is solving a differential equation (hydrodynamical- bacteriological analogy). Likewise, to check the effect on microdroplets, faculty members Sakthi Prasad and Arindam Das are designing low-cost, cold plasma-based, high-frequency, negative ion generators for flow visualization. According to IIT Goa director B K Mishra, the institute has commenced working on addressing multiple challenges related to COVID-19. They range from personal protective equipment (PPE), drug discovery, rapid detection kits, epidemiological modelling to the development of contactless interfaces.

Apart from this, researchers from across the globe have noticed that probably the trajectory of the spread of COVID-19 is different from the patterns seen in Europe or elsewhere. Mishra further stated that on the basis of data available locally and globally, researchers would study patterns of the susceptible population and transmission dynamics of the outbreak.

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