A single soda can. That's where all the coronaviruses causing COVID-19 could easily fit, according to a calculation by a U.K.-based mathematician whose study shows just how much devastation is caused by minuscule viral particles.
Using global rates of new infections with the pandemic disease, coupled with estimations of viral load, Bath University math expert Kit Yates worked out there are around 2 quintillion – or 2 billion billion – SARS-CoV-2 virus particles in the world at any one time.
Detailing the steps in his calculations, Yates said he used the diameter of SARS-CoV-2 – at an average of about 100 nanometers, or 100 billionths of a meter – and then figured out the volume of the spherical virus.
Even accounting for the coronavirus' projecting spike proteins and the fact that the spherical particles will leave gaps when stacked together, the total is still less than in a single 330-milliliter soda can, he said.
"It's astonishing to think that all the trouble, the disruption, the hardship and the loss of life that has resulted over the last year could constitute just a few mouthfuls," Yates said in a statement.
More than 2.34 million people have died in the COVID-19 pandemic so far, and there have been almost 107 million confirmed cases worldwide.
