Coronavirus: Flushing toilets can spread infection, says report

New Delhi : Next time when you flush the toilet, do not forget to close the lid as a recent study has revealed that with open lid flushing the toilet can spread coronavirus in the air. The study has been done by researchers at Yangzhou University in China.

Published in the journal Physics of Fluids, the study used computer models to simulate water and air flows in a flushing toilet and the resulting droplet cloud.

According to the study, as we flush the toilet, tiny bits of fecal matter can stick in air which are not visible with naked eyes and can infect the person coming next to use the toilet.

"Flushing will lift the virus up from the toilet bowl," co-author of the paper Ji-Xiang Wang, who researches fluids at Yangzhou University, said in an email, according to Washington Post. Mr Wang further said, people "need to close the lid first and then trigger the flushing process."

"One can foresee that the velocity will be even higher when a toilet is used frequently, such as in the case of a family toilet during a busy time or a public toilet serving a densely populated area," Mr Wang said.

Public toilets have been considered as the main source of transmission of infection; though it is yet to be established that COVID-19 also spreaded because of this.

"The risk is not zero, but how great a risk it is, we don't know," Mr Gerba, an expert in the field for 45 years, said. "The big unknown is how much virus is infectious in the toilet when you flush it...and how much virus does it take to cause an infection," he added.