The National Institutes of Health (NIH; Bethesda, MD) is currently employing a DM20-527 laser from Photonics Industries (Ronkonkoma, NY) to visualize the size of microscopic “speech droplets” that were suggested to be one of the transmission mechanisms responsible for the community spread of COVID-19.
The DM20-527 laser creates a light sheet of green light to illuminate the plume of speech droplets generated when people speak. The green light sheet enables the size of the speech droplets to be accurately measured and data logged.
Prior results using a continuous-wave laser were presented to the New England Journal of Medicine, which facilitated the recent decision by the CDC to revise their guidelines regarding face masks.
The findings were that N95 masks are not required to create a barrier to speech droplets. As such, for the general population, any face covering is adequate to stop these speech droplets, reserving the use of N95 masks for front-line medical workers.
For more information, please visit photonix.com.