Why a flu transmission experiment didn’t spread the flu

By Conor Meehan, Associate Professor of Microbial Bioinformatics, Nottingham Trent University

A group of volunteers spent days locked in a small hotel room with people actively infected with flu. They played games, shared objects and exercised together in conditions designed to help the virus spread. Yet not a single person caught influenza.

The unexpected finding comes from a well-designed study that set out to answer a basic question: how does flu really spread?

Influenza, the virus responsible for flu, is known to spread through aerosols (microscopic droplets) released when an infected person coughs, sneezes or even breathes…

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