By Stephen Beech via SWNS
Cleaning surfaces every two hours at airports cuts potentially deadly norovirus infections by 83%, according to a new study.
Researchers found that airport restaurants had the highest risk of norovirus transmission.
But frequently disinfecting surfaces, mask-wearing and antimicrobial surface coatings at the transport hubs can all help prevent the highly contagious illness – also known as the winter vomiting bug – from spreading, say scientists.
Study author Professor Nan Zhang, of the Beijing University of Technology in China, said: “Norovirus 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.”
To investigate the risk of norovirus infection from surfaces among passengers in different zones of the airport, the research team collected real touch data from 21.3 hours of video, which captured almost 26,000 touches.
They developed a model of surface transmission and simulated the risk of infection from norovirus and the effectiveness of various interventions in different airport areas.
Zhang said: “The touch data showed that, without any interventions, restaurants at airports had the highest risk of norovirus transmission, with approximately 4.6 out of 51,494 travelers infected.
“Disinfecting public surfaces every two hours reduced the risk of norovirus 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 48.0%, because masks stop people from touching their face.
“Furthermore, using antimicrobial copper or copper-nickel alloy coatings for most public surfaces lowered the infection risk by 15.9% to 99.2%.”
He says the study, published in the journal PLOS Computational Biology, provides “crucial” insights for developing infection prevention and control strategies specifically tailored for norovirus within airport environments.
Zhang noted that the data for the study was collected during the COVID-19 pandemic, so surface-touching behaviors may have been different from normal.
But he said that, overall, the simulated results indicated that public surface disinfection, mask-wearing wearing and the use of antimicrobial surfaces are effective ways of controlling the spread of norovirus via surfaces.
Zhang added: “Regular surface infection is much more effective than regular handwashing for blocking norovirus transmission via fomite route in airports.”
