by Dillon Frank

Speculation about whether singing emits more particles of the coronavirus than speaking started in early 2020 after an outbreak in Washington state. 

“There has been some previous evidence early in the pandemic where a choir met for a practice and a bunch of people got infected,” said Jennifer German, an assistant research professor at the University of Maryland. 

That evidence led researchers to question whether singing increases transmission of the coronavirus. 
Kristen Coleman, an assistant research professor in UMD’s Institute for Applied Environmental Health, set out to answer that question.

Coleman and her team asked COVID-19 positive participants to breathe into the Gesundheit II machine, invented by Donald Milton, a professor of environmental health at UMD. This machine sucks in the air around a study volunteer’s head in order to collect and measure tiny airborne droplets generated deep in the lungs. That allows researchers to test if talking, singing and breathing emit different amounts of virus. 

Coleman concluded that 94% of the virus was emitted while participants used their voices to sing or talk. Singing emits the most virus particles, the study found. 

Jelena Srebric, a professor of mechanical engineering at UMD, led another study to figure out how much virus musicians emit. It asked volunteer musicians to sing and play instruments, both with masks and without. As the musicians performed, Srebric and her team would record the air flow which showed the movement of air particles and recorded their airflow. 

Srebric found that both singing and playing instruments can emit higher levels of coronavirus than talking or just simply breathing. That’s why she said it’s important that musicians wear a high quiality and tight fitting mask. She acknowledged that breakthrough cases could still happen, but that masks help to reduce these numbers. 

UMD’s School of Music collaborated with her to develop coronavirus protocols, Srebric said. 

“The music department changed the way they rehearse,” she said. “They literally took the recommendations that came out of our study and applied them in their music program.”

Featured image: A student breathes into the Gesundheit II Machine, developed by Donald Milton, a professor of environmental health at the University of Maryland.