How Coronavirus Spread In One Restaurant Shows Why Air Travel Is Safer Than You Think

In a time of standing six feet apart and avoiding confined spaces, there are naturally concerns about the health safety of air travel where passengers are crowded together on an aircraft.

Some may see a parallel in a limited study of how a restaurant in southern China’s Guangzhou was attended by a diner from Wuhan unknowingly infected with the coronavirus. Nine others around the diner became infected. The shared meal was on January 24 when the virus’ spread was limited and the other diners had no other known exposure.

Airlines are planning to block the middle seat on flights so passengers are spaced out, yet the restaurant study would appear to show social distancing has limitations.

Above image: Index case-patient denoted by a yellow-filled red circle. Red circles indicate seating of future case-patients. Dates are when the diagnosis was confirmed.

Of the nine other diners who later became infected, two were on the diner’s immediate right side at the same table – an easy argument for social distancing. Yet two other infections occurred to diners 10 feet away at a separate table.

“The key factor for infection was the direction of the airflow,” researchers at the Guangzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention concluded in a research letter to be published in the July Emerging Infectious Diseases journal published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.