At airports, frequently disinfecting surfaces and mask-wearing can help prevent the spread of norovirus, according to a new study published in the open-access journal PLOS Computational Biology.
Norovirus is a highly contagious gastrointestinal virus that causes severe vomiting and diarrhea, and is responsible for about 685 million cases and 200,000 deaths each year. The virus is primarily transmitted through surfaces and outbreaks during air travel are especially common, due to the large number of public surfaces in airports.
Researchers collected real touch data from 21.3 hours of airport video, which captured almost 26,000 touches. They then simulated the risk of infection from norovirus and the effectiveness of various interventions in different airport areas.
The touch data showed that restaurants at airports had the highest risk of norovirus transmission, with about 4.6 out of 51,494 travellers infected. Disinfecting public surfaces every two hours reduced the risk of infection per visit to the airport by 83.2%. In contrast, handwashing every two hours reduced the risk by only 2%, and mask-wearing 50% of the time reduced risk by 48%. Furthermore, using antimicrobial copper or copper-nickel alloy coatings for most public surfaces lowered the infection risk by 15.9%-99.2%.
