In a recent development, traces of the novel coronavirus have been identified in the bathroom of an unoccupied apartment in Guangzhou, China. This suggests that the airborne virus may have drifted upwards through the drain pipes.

According to a Bloomberg report, the infected bathroom was directly above the home of five people who had tested positive for COVID-19 a week earlier.

The new development is reminiscent of an incident at Hong Kong’s Amoy Gardens private housing estate nearly two decades ago, where 329 residents had caught severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, in part because of faulty sewage pipelines. 42 residents had died in that incident, making it the most damaging community outbreak of SARS.

The researchers conducted “an on-site tracer simulation experiment” to check if the virus could travel through waste pipes via minute airborne particles that are released by the force of a toilet flush. Two cases had been confirmed on each of those storeys in early February, raising concern that SARS-CoV-2-laden particles from stool had wafted into their homes via the plumbing.

Transmission Through Respiratory Droplets

The novel coronavirus is transmitted mainly through respiratory droplets - through nasal discharge and spraying of saliva, according to the World Health Organization.

Prior investigations have shown that flushing the toilet can release germ-laden aerosols from the excreta. These particles can be dispersed over distances of more than 1 meter (3 feet) and remain in the air for long periods, particularly in confined, poorly ventilated spaces.

A common toilet was was implicated in a SARS-CoV-2 infection that possibly occurred on an evacuation flight from Milan to South Korea in late March, researchers said in a report in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Emerging Infectious Diseases journal.