Every COVID-19 Particle on Earth Could Fit a Coke Can: Scientists

According to a British mathematician, all of the COVID-19 virus particles that are spreading death and misery around the world would fit in a single Coke can.

Kit Yates, a number crunching expert at Bath University, found that there are around 2 trillion – or 2 billion billion – SARS-CoV-2 particles worldwide, Sky News reported.

But because of their tiny size, if you rounded them all up, it would only add up to “a few sips.”

“It’s amazing to think that all of the trouble, disruption, hardship, and loss of life that has arisen over the past year can only be a few sips,” said Yates.

Describing his infinitesimal calculations, Yates said he used the diameter of the virus particles – about 100 nanometers or 100 billionths of a meter on average – and found the volume of the spherical virus.

Even considering the tell-tale spike proteins and the fact that the particles leave gaps when they stack, the total amount is still less than a single 330-milliliter can of Coke, he said.

“When asked to calculate the total volume of SARS-CoV-2 in the world for the BBC Radio 4 show More or Less, I admitted that I had no idea what the answer would be,” Yates wrote in The conversation.

“My wife suggested it be the size of an Olympic swimming pool. “Either that or a teaspoon,” she said. “It’s usually one or the other with questions like this,” he added.

More than 2.35 million people have died of COVID-19 to date, 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.