When Flu Flies

So are there better ways to scan passengers?
There's a term called risk-based border screening. What that basically means is that you're going to rank passengers into "no risk," where people are fine, "low risk," which requires additional testing, and "high risk," which basically means "we're isolating you here." In the screening, what will happen is travelers will be asked about where they've been, how do you feel, have you been coughing… The [U.S.] federal government has designed a risk-based border screening strategy that hasn't been used, so we don't know how effective it is. It might work, but we don't know the answer.

And what about on the airplane? How can airlines prevent diseases from spreading?
I'd love to see hand sanitizers throughout the cabin or an alcohol-based gel handed out with the peanuts. Anything that really encourages people to be washing their hands. Also, there have been some papers looking at ventilation within confined spaces, specifically from a flu outbreak in 1979 … which found there was a benefit to increasing the ventilation rate. So there might be a benefit if, whenever WHO declares an outbreak of public-health importance, airlines were required to increase their ventilations. We don't know for sure it would work, but it's one thought.

What do passengers need to be thinking about when they're traveling on airplanes? Any precautions they should take?
The risk of infection within any confined space is dependent on three things: the strength of the source strand [how contagious or lethal it is], proximity to exposure and ventilation. You can't change the lethality and you don't have control over who you're seated next to. However, unless you've come in very close contact, basically within two rows of a contagious person, you don't have much to fear in terms of contracting an illness … so if you're seated in row 12 and you're hearing somebody coughing in row 30 you don't have to worry.

What if you're in row 29?
The good news is you can still minimize risk by practicing very good hand hygiene, not touching eyes or nose and using alcohol-based hand sanitizers. The second important thing to think about is ventilation. You can actually increase the ventilation at your seat a little bit more, through the overhead air releaser. What I recommend people do is turn it on to a low stream and position it so the flow goes in front of your face. That will increase the ventilation, at minimal, create a turbulence of air in front of your face. If a particle is coming by, that might be enough to push it out of the way.

The final thing is to keep yourself well hydrated. The mucus membrane is one of the body's first barriers and inside there are a lot of enzymes our body uses to destroy viruses and bacteria. When mucus membranes get dehydrated, it's postulated they're not going to work as well. So drinking plenty of nondehydrating fluids could be good.

© 2009