For the reason that start of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists have been warning about catching the disease through aerosols within the air. This even led to the mask mandates that forced everyone to wear face coverings in public places.

Nevertheless, a recent study published in The Lancet Microbe found that aerosols should not be the first concern of everyone when stuck in a household with a COVID-19 patient. Researchers recently found that contaminated surfaces and hands drive transmissions in homes.

The Imperial College London-led study is the primary to supply empirical evidence for the transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus answerable for COVID-19, via ceaselessly touched surfaces and folks’s hands.

“There is no doubt that if you might have COVID-19 you are emitting the virus into the air as micro-aerosols in addition to large droplets that land in your hands and the surface around you. What hasn’t been shown, until now, is that the presence of the virus on people’s hands or household surfaces predicts transmission to contacts,” lead creator Ajit Lalvani said in a press release.

“Our real-life study in London households provides the primary empirical evidence to point out that the presence of SARS-CoV-2 on people’s hands and surfaces contributes significantly to the spread of COVID-19. Since we didn’t systematically sample household air, we cannot rule out airborne transmission occurring in parallel.”

For the study, Lalvani and colleagues examined 279 London households through the height of the alpha and pre-alpha waves of the pandemic between Aug. 1, 2020, and March 31, 2021. They found that infection was significantly higher in houses where the virus was detected on ceaselessly touched surfaces and the hands of participants.

“Presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA on primary cases’ and contacts’ hands and on frequently-touched household surface associates with the transmission, identifying these as potential vectors for the spread in households,” the team wrote.

To verify that the transmission and infection happened inside the households, the researchers did whole genome sequencing of the 25 primary cases and their contacts. They found that the first case-contact pairs had the identical virus strains.

Nevertheless, U.S. News & World Report identified that the study was purely observational. It didn’t prove causation for the reason that airborne transmission was not ruled out. The study was also conducted through the early pandemic phase, so it’s unclear if the identical results would apply to the more moderen variants.