2021 Volume 51 Issue 1 Pages 25-35
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) which was first reported in December 2019 has had many impacts on society. School education has not been an exception. Especially in music classes that involve singing and other expressive activities, the risk of spreading respiratory droplets requires urgent preventive measures. However, scientific research on this topic has been scarce. We investigated droplet infection control measures during singing activity by visualizing the spread of droplets, from which scientific knowledge was obtained. The subjects were asked to engage in singing activity while wearing five different items of personal protective equipment (PPE), namely a non-woven face mask, gauze face mask, mask for singers, face shield or mouth shield, during which the investigators visualized the spread of droplets. We found that a non-woven face mask was most effective in preventing the spread of droplets while singing. The spread of droplets was also compared among humming, singing (with words), and reading lyrics aloud as well as between singing in Japanese and German. Acoustic changes caused by wearing the PPE were also monitored and subjected to phonetic analysis.
