Evidence for airborne infectious disease transmission in public ground transport – a literature review

Abstract

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International tuberculosis contact-tracing notifications in Germany: analysis of national data from 2010 to 2018 and implications for efficiency

“…Beginning in 2019, which is outside the study period, RKI started to receive CT notifications specific to such incidents, a number of which concern long-distance bus travel within the border-free region of the European Union. However, CT following ground travel is associated with a variety of logistic obstacles, making followup of contacts very difficult or even unfeasible, as detailed passenger data is often not collected or is very incomplete [24,30,33]. Nevertheless, the risk of transmission during long-distance bus travel is considered to be greater than that for air travel, mainly due to the lack of standard HEPA filtration in buses and trains [24,30,34].…”

“…However, CT following ground travel is associated with a variety of logistic obstacles, making followup of contacts very difficult or even unfeasible, as detailed passenger data is often not collected or is very incomplete [24,30,33]. Nevertheless, the risk of transmission during long-distance bus travel is considered to be greater than that for air travel, mainly due to the lack of standard HEPA filtration in buses and trains [24,30,34]. Unfortunately, scientific literature on CT following railway or bus travel is limited, making the assessment of its corresponding impact on public health difficult.…”

“…When it comes to the current available evidence on this topic, most of the literature focuses on CT following air travel and several systematic reviews and research articles have aimed to quantify the risk of transmission [6,8,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]. A systematic review by Kotila and colleagues reported a very low risk estimate of 0.1-1.3% for testing positive for TB infection following exposure on a longdistance flight of > 8 h in duration [18] and so far no case of active TB disease following transmission on aircraft has been reported [6,17,18].…”

Social Distancing in Public Transport: Mobilising New Technologies for Demand Management under the COVID-19 Crisis

“…Prior to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, epidemiological studies on other similar pathogens have reported that virus transmission in public transport is possible, and occurs as a result of physical proximity to infected persons in an enclosed space (Furuya 2007;Cui et al 2011;Troko et al 2011;Mohr et al 2012;Browne et al 2016;Gosce and Johansson 2018). Recent research on SARS-Cov-2, the virus pathogen that causes the Covid-19 disease, indicates that a number of potential transmission paths are possible, including: respiratory and direct contact with large droplets, airborne respiratory with small droplets (aerosols), fomite, fecal-oral, and ocular (van Doremalen et al 2020;Chu et al 2020).…”

Association of High-Speed Rail and Tuberculosis Transmission in Newly Integrated Regions: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from China

“…Despite tremendous changes in both public transport mode and population mobility, there is still little evidence presented on the association between public health and development of the HSR. There is still a lack of quantification and direct assessment of the risk [26,27]. Any event that leads to changes in population and social interaction has the potential to affect the spread of disease, but epidemiological work rarely provides direct and data-based evidence on the effectiveness of policies aimed at reducing exposure [4].…”