According to a British mathematician, all COVID-19 virus particles that spread death and misery around the world would fit in a single can of Coca-Cola.
Kit Yates, a data expert at the University of Bath, learned that there are about 2 quintillion 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 up, it would only form “a few bites.”
“It’s amazing to think that all the problems, disruption, hardship, and loss of life that have resulted over the last year could constitute just a few bites,” 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 parts per meter) and discovered the volume of the spherical virus.
Even considering the revealing tip proteins and the fact that the particles will leave gaps when stacked together, the total is still less than in a 330-milliliter Coca-Cola can, he said.
“When I was asked to calculate the total volume of SARS-CoV-2 in the world for BBC Radio 4’s‘ More or Less ’program, I will admit that I had no idea of the answer,” Yates wrote in The Conversation.
“My wife suggested it would be the size of an Olympic pool. “Either that or a teaspoon,” he 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 nearly 472,000 and there are approximately 27.3 million confirmed cases.