A: Thankfully, NO!
We’ll admit the Nerdy Girls had not even contemplated this SCARY prospect before an astute follower question, and it turns out you all aren’t the only ones to wonder.
While infectious disease experts downplayed the risk since the virus is not present in significant infectious quantities in blood (as opposed to those now famous respiratory droplets), fortunately some enterprising scientists have put this to a more direct test.
Researchers from Kansas State University directly injected three prominent species of mosquitoes with SARS-CoV-2 to find out if the virus can replicate inside the insects’ gut and spread to its salivary glands.
“Based upon the lack of detectable infectious virus in any of the 277 samples collected at all time points beyond 24 h post-inoculation, we conclude that SARS-CoV-2 is unable to replicate in mosquitoes and that even if a mosquito fed on a person with virus in the blood, that the mosquito would not be a vector if feeding on a naïve host.”
HURRAY! It’s not every day we get good news about this virus, but we’ll take the wins where we can.
We imagine there are many other reasons you want to avoid mosquito bites, but since we know being outdoors is safer for COVID-19 transmission, don’t be afraid to enjoy your backyard on account of worries about mosquitoes and COVID-19.
