Of course, they were careful. They disinfected their hands at the entrance to the church. They gave up the usual hugs and kept their distance. But precisely in this time of crisis, around 60 members of a choir in Mount Vernon, a town south of Seattle, did not want to miss the chance to sing together.
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Why too? It was March 10, and Sars-CoV-2 had not yet arrived in their region, according to the authorities. The singers rehearsed for two and a half hours. Everyone kept their own sheet of music. No one coughed. Nobody sneezed. Everyone thought they were healthy.
Almost three weeks later, 45 choir members tested positive. At least three of them were hospitalized with Covid-19. Two have since passed away.
After everything that the World Health Organization WHO has previously said about the infection pathways of Sars-CoV-2, the choir should have been largely spared. So far, the same was true for the experts at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin: there is a particular risk if an infected person directly coughs at, annies, or, if the pronunciation is wet, speaks to him for a long time close to his face. Then dangerous, relatively large droplets of secretions fly around, sometimes for minutes; because of their weight, they then sink to the ground.
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