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Evaluation of SARS‐COV‐2 transmission and infection in airliner cabins
Author(s) -
Wang Wensi,
Wang Feng,
Lai Dayi,
Chen Qingyan
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
indoor air
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.387
H-Index - 99
eISSN - 1600-0668
pISSN - 0905-6947
DOI - 10.1111/ina.12979
Subject(s) - covid-19 , airborne transmission , transmission (telecommunications) , sars virus , computational fluid dynamics , environmental science , room air distribution , aeronautics , virology , simulation , medicine , computer science , aerospace engineering , meteorology , engineering , physics , telecommunications , infectious disease (medical specialty) , pathology , disease , outbreak
Commercial airliners have played an important role in spreading the SARS‐CoV‐2 virus worldwide. This study used computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to simulate the transmission of SARS‐CoV‐2 on a flight from London to Hanoi and another from Singapore to Hangzhou. The dispersion of droplets of different sizes generated by coughing, talking, and breathing activities in a cabin by an infected person was simulated by means of the Lagrangian method. The SARS‐CoV‐2 virus contained in expiratory droplets traveled with the cabin air distribution and was inhaled by other passengers. Infection was determined by counting the number of viral copies inhaled by each passenger. According to the results, our method correctly predicted 84% of the infected/uninfected cases on the first flight. The results also show that wearing masks and reducing conversation frequency between passengers could help to reduce the risk of exposure on the second flight.