Covid update: 25 February 2021
25 Feb 2021
A round up of this week s coronavirus-related news and countermeasures from the photonics industry.
A technician preparing a solar powered refrigerator for a dispensary in Kenya. Solar-powered refrigerators could be a game-changer in Africaâs fight against Covid-19 by helping the continent to store and distribute vaccines, especially in rural and remote areas with no connection to electricity.
As the world is rolling out mass vaccinations against Covid-19, experts from the Global Environment Facility-funded Sure Chill vaccine storage project in Colombia, Eswatini and Kenya add that equipping health facilities not connected to the national grid with solar-powered refrigerators could be key to reaching rural populations.
COVID-19 can spread from asymptomatic but infected people through small aerosol droplets in their exhaled breath. Most studies of the flow of exhaled air have focused on coughing or sneezing; however, speaking while near one another is also risky. In Physics of Fluids, scientists used smoke and laser light to study the flow of expelled breath near and around two people conversing in various relative postures commonly found in the service industry.