Is it safe to travel by train for hours during the Covid-19 pandemic? Will fellow passengers be infected if a traveller turns out to be a patient?
Passengers in seats on the same row as the infected person averaged a 1.5 per cent chance of catching the virus, about 10 times higher than seats one and two rows apart. Transmission in the same column is less significant possibly because the backrests that separate rows are a good barrier to slow the spread of virus-laden aerosols, they wrote.
“The findings suggest that during the Covid-19 epidemic it is important to reduce the density of passengers and promote personal hygiene measures, the use of face coverings and possibly carry out temperature checks before boarding,” he said. “Considering the similar setting of train in a closed space, the findings from our study can provide some evidence for Covid-19 interventions in these scenarios during the outbreak,” Lai wrote.