A new study has found that airline passengers are more at risk of catching the coronavirus if they sit in a window seat. The widely held belief that those in aisle seats would be more exposed. The findings come from a detailed analysis of passengers on a Qantas flight during which as many as 11 people were infected. It also indicated that passengers in the middle of the economy section of the Airbus A330 aircraft were more likely to catch the virus than those in the rear. Sitting within two rows of an infected person was also a risk factor.
The researchers, based at universities and public health institutions in Western Australia, where the Qantas flight landed, said they had not expected to find window seats involved greater risk of exposure. “This finding was unanticipated given the widely held view that persons in window seats are at lower risk for exposure to an infectious pathogen during flight,” they wrote in Emerging Infectious Diseases. That research considered several ways by which pathogens could spread and found that touching contaminated surfaces was the biggest risk, causing as much of a hazard as close person-to-person contact and contamination from the surrounding air combined. The aircraft industry has previously argued that the risk of airborne infection on flights is extremely low because of air filtering. The International Air Transport Association released a report that said filters removed “virtually all viruses and bacteria”.
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