You're More Likely to Get COVID From Someone Doing This Than From Coughing By John Quinn of Best Life | You're More Likely to Get COVID From Someone Doing This Than From Coughing While our understanding of COVID and how it's transmitted has evolved over the last year, a solid consensus emerged early that aerosols, meaning contaminated droplets, are the most common way the virus spreads from person to person. So, if you've been around someone who's coughed in the last 10 months, you likely found yourself backing up quickly out of fear of being infected by COVID-19. But now, a new study published in the journal