You often see yourself with a cold after returning from a flight on the plane. If this happens to you, scientists have told you that they have determined how viruses circulate inside the plane and find that the likelihood of you catching a cold depends largely on how much you are moving inside the plane.

Based on different influenza patterns, a new study shows that a person has an 80% chance of getting the flu if he is sitting in the front or back row or between two seats on either side, otherwise the chance of infection will be reduced to 3%.

But this forces you to stay where you are, but when you move, you will be more vulnerable to friction and contact with a passenger or flight crew and someone may catch a cold, so if you want to stay well until the end of your flight, you must determine the amount of transport and walking while flying.

"We have found that the disease cannot be transmitted directly to an infected traveler outside an area of one meter," said mathematician Howard Weiss of the Georgia Institute of Technology. "There has been little research on this question before, in this case a team of ten people traveling by ten different continents, equipped with iPads to track passenger and crew movements."

The team recorded observations by taking 229 samples of air on board, looking for the effects of 18 common respiratory viruses.

One of the most important things to talk about is that scientists have not tracked the effect or spread of influenza, but instead have tracked the movements of passengers and crew, and then applied current models - how viruses spread - to this data.

The scientist "Weiss" adds: "The simulation provides us with strong evidence that if you stay out of the area that makes you injured, and remains clean, you are not likely to catch it during the flight."

This was supported by the results of those samples with 229 models, which showed that about 40% of travelers never ride the shortest transcontinental trips, while the second 40% of travelers rise at least once, while the remaining 20% Do they wake up twice or 

The study also indicates that the probability of you getting more than twice depends on where you sit, and the percentage of this possibility will be twice as much if you sit in the corridor instead of sitting at the window, and at the same time, the average time that passengers spend away from a place Their seating is 5 minutes.

The research model also showed that none of the crew members with a common cold can transmit infection to an average (4.6) passengers per flight, and as we said earlier, the research used influenza patterns instead of tracking insect spread in the flight cabin.

The observations made by the research team are limited to short trips of up to 5 hours, and when mentioning short trips, this also means flights that are a small single-lane plane, and is known to be the best in reducing the spread of infection.

Despite everything previously said, there is still a very useful and rare insight into how the disease got to the plane's cabin, especially in how we moved.

According to the molecular biologist Edsel Maurice Salvaña from the University of the Philippines, who did not participate in this research: «Certainly we need to understand more about the cause of RKN 4A while traveling, and how cold and cough can spread, and the study team has planned the patient’s movements and One step further to test a plate that includes 18 respiratory viruses using a highly sensitive DNA test. »

So why does it seem that many of us receive the infection when they are on an air flight, is it pure imagination or is there really a rise in the level of disease for travelers?

He may have received the infection from the airport as suggested by the researchers conducting this study, or it could be from other continuous trips that take longer.

Of course, this requires more detailed studies before being able to know the truth about what is happening, but at the same time, your chance of receiving the infection may not be as high as you think, as you can reduce these risks by washing your hands, thus protecting the indirect transmission.

“We can eliminate the risk of infection indirectly inside the flight deck, if both passengers and the crew of the plane try to maintain personal hygiene and keep their hands out of their eyes and nose,” concluded “Weiss.”

Source

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-map-how-colds-flu-spread-through-aeroplanes