Aerosols and choirs: package sing prohibitions are exaggerated

The location of the choirs in Germany is serious. Rehearsals and performances can take place due to the Corona pandemic only to a very limited extent or not at

Aerosols and choirs: package sing prohibitions are exaggerated

The location of the choirs in Germany is serious. Rehearsals and performances can take place due to the Corona pandemic only to a very limited extent or not at all. The state Minister for Culture Monika Grütters recommended the middle of this week, all privately financed choirs, to apply to the funding programme "reboot culture", the privately organised music business. Especially hard to bear the situation in Berlin, where the Senate adopted a fundamental of singing is prohibited in closed rooms, without previously consulting choirs with the radio, to take the Opera Director or the choir associations. Bernhard Hess, the Director of the Rias chamber choir, which started long back with the samples and on 20. June had also been a first concert, it remained nothing more than to send his choir early in the holiday.

Jan Brachmann

editor in the features section.

F. A. Z.

Shortly before eight singers participating inside, and the singers of the Choir to an elaborate study of the Hermann-Rietschel-Institute (HRI) of the Technical University of Berlin, in co-operation with the clinic for audiology and phoniatrics at Charité hospital in Berlin. The results of the by Anne Hartmann (HRI) and Dirk Mellow (Charité) - led working group are now available as a Preprint. You can relate to once studies to "increase the aerosol formation in professional Singing", and on the other, the "risk assessment of rehearsal rooms for choirs with regard to virus-Laden aerosols". At the same time, the hospital of Munich, Ludwig-Maximilians has to Gain the University together with the University hospital and the Bavarian radio choir experiments made, and made once more, the aerosol dispersion when Singing in the near field around the mouth visible.

The Berlin study goes beyond that. "We have particles made of the source strengths is measured and calculations for the Concentration of particles in large rooms," explains the Phoniater Dirk Mellow the study in an interview with this newspaper. The singers had to put in front of a glass tube in which a sample probe was located with a laser particle counter. Was measured the particle emissions per second in four situations: relaxation breathing, reading a text, Singing a single voice from Mendelssohn's "Abschied vom Walde", Singing of a ten second long Haltetons on the vowel a.

indicates The result that the particles strengthen the source when Singing, depending on the sound pressure level, just under four to just under one hundred times as high as in Speaking. Singing, particularly the Singing of women, produced to an increased extent aerosols, can lead to the Transmission of Sars-CoV-2. That's the bad news, but it was expectable.

"the message that when they Sing, the more aerosols are formed, makes me depressed. Therefore, it makes sense, the source investigation to associate with the underexposed aspects such as room size and ventilation,“ says Mellow, who is also a trained singer's strengths. On the Basis of for the first time, reliable Figures are also robust risk management approaches could be the design. "I see the results of our study, therefore, is not as bad news for the choirs, but as a basis, the condition of the flat is forbidden to get out. Individual concepts have to be developed according to the parameters sing duration, room size, number of persons, ventilation.“

Mechanical ventilation

has created on the basis of the source measurements to strengthen projections for the aerosol concentration in various room sizes with a different number of people and ventilation systems. A choir practice room with window ventilation, an office with a mechanical and one with window ventilation as well as two mechanically ventilated concert halls compared with each other: that of the Konzerthaus Berlin as a classical "Shoe box" and the vineyard architecture of the Dresden Philharmonic were. The calculation curves for these concert halls were in forty to fifty singers, and three hundred and fifty to nearly five hundred visitors in such a low, that one can say: With mechanical ventilation, the aerosol concentration in the space can be well in the grip of war, that concerts would be feasible.

Date Of Update: 10 July 2020, 02:19