MEIKLEJOHN G, KEMPE C H, DOWNIE A W, BERGE T O, ST VINCENT L, RAO A R
Bull World Health Organ. 1961;25(1):63-7.
The view is widely held that variola is highly infectious, and it was therefore thought of interest to obtain precise information on the amount of virus disseminated in the air by smallpox patients at various stages of their illness. To this end, measured samples of air in and around the smallpox wards of the Infectious Diseases Hospital, Madras, were tested for the presence of variola virus. Surprisingly, virus was recovered on one occasion only by the air sampling device used. All other tests were negative although large volumes of air were sampled in close proximity to patients at various stages of the disease. The authors consider that further observations should be made with more sensitive air sampling methods.
人们普遍认为天花具有高度传染性，因此，获取关于天花患者在疾病不同阶段向空气中传播的病毒量的精确信息被认为是有意义的。为此，对马德拉斯传染病医院天花病房内及周边的空气进行了测量采样，以检测是否存在天花病毒。令人惊讶的是，仅在一次采样中，使用的空气采样设备检测到了病毒。尽管在疾病不同阶段的患者附近采集了大量空气样本，但所有其他检测均为阴性。作者认为，应该使用更灵敏的空气采样方法进行进一步观察。
