According to a British mathematician, all the COVID-19 virus particles that spread death and filth around the world would fit in a single box of Coca-Cola.
Kit Yates, a figures expert at the University of Bath, found that there are about 2 quintillion – or 2 trillion – of SARS-CoV-2 particles in the world at any given time, Sky News reported.
But because of their tiny size, if you round them all, they would be just “a few mouths.”
“It’s amazing to think that all the trouble, disruption, hardship and loss of human lives that have resulted in the last year could only be a few mouthfuls,” Yates said.
Describing his infinitesimal calculations, Yates said he used the diameter of viral particles – at an average of about 100 nanometers, or 100 billion meters – and figured out the volume of the spherical virus.
Even taking into account the top indicator proteins and the fact that the particles will leave gaps when stacked together, the total is still smaller than in a single 330-milliliter Coca-Cola can, he said.
“When I was asked to calculate the total volume of SARS-CoV-2 in the world for the BBC Radio 4 show ‘More or Less’, I will admit that I had no idea what the answer would be,” Yates wrote in The Conversation.
“My wife suggested it would be the size of an Olympic-size swimming pool. “Either that or a teaspoon,” she said. “It’s usually one or the other with these kinds of questions,” he added.
More than 2.35 million people have died from COVID-19 so far and there have been more than 107 million confirmed cases worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University.
In the US, the death toll is almost 472,000 and there are about 27.3 million confirmed cases.