Contact infection of infectious disease onboard a cruise ship.

Journal article

Cruise tourism has become more popular. Long-term personal contact, complex population flows, a lack of medical care facilities, and defective infrastructure aboard most cruise ships is likely to result in the ship becoming an incubator for infectious diseases. In this paper, we use a cruise ship as a research scenario. Taking into consideration personal behavior, the nature and transfer route of the virus across different surfaces, virus reproduction, and disinfection, we studied contact infection of infectious disease on a cruise ship. Using gastroenteritis caused by the norovirus as an example, we analyzed the characteristics of infectious disease propagation based on simulation results under different conditions. We found hand washing are the most important factors affecting virus propagation and passenger infection. It also decides either the total number of virus microorganisms or the virus distribution in different functional areas. The transfer rate between different surfaces is a key factor influencing the concentricity of the virus. A high transfer rate leads to high concentricity. In addition, the risk of getting infected is effectively reduced when the disinfection frequency is above a certain threshold. The efficiency of disinfection of functional areas is determined by total virus number and total contact times of surfaces.

Authors: Zhang, N; Miao, R; Huang, H; Chan, E

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
• Journal: Scientific Reports
• Volume: 6
• Pages: 38790
• Publication date: 2016-12-01
• Acceptance date: 2016-11-11
• DOI: 10.1038/srep38790
• ISSN: 2045-2322
• Language: English
• Keywords: cruise ship; norovirus; disinfection; personal behavior; contact infection; virus propagation