They have used sneeze labs -- a technology the U.S. Army invented -- to test how the virus has spread through the air.
"It would mimic you and I walking through someone's sneeze. There's a swirl of virus within droplets, so it doesn't exist just in air, but it's in fine droplets of many different sizes,” Maj. Sabrina McGraw, a scientist in the Center for Aerobiology at USAMRIID, explained. "Large droplets would land on your mouth and eyes, maybe on your hands, on surfaces, small droplets. You breathe them into your nostrils. Some of them make it past your projections, get deep into the lungs."
A vaccine may take 18 months. These researchers have been moving quickly to animal trials using known therapeutics. Tests using ferrets may eventually hold the key to curing coronavirus in people, according to Cox.