ABOVE: Ashok Srinivasan
UNIVERSITY OF WEST FLORIDA
In its latest guidance on air travel, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stated that flying domestically is safe for people who are fully vaccinated, but questions remain about the risks for those who aren’t immunized. Studies have suggested that the actual flight is fairly low-risk—even without masks, infectious droplets aren’t likely to spread past a couple rows, for instance—but lots of behaviors associated with flying, from security screenings to getting on and off the plane, can add to potential infection exposure.
The Viral Infection Propagation Through Air-Travel (VIPRA) project brings together scientists from diverse fields to model and analyze these different behaviors and potential strategies for reducing the risks they pose, and in a paper published April 28 in Royal Society Open Science, they weigh in on the boarding process.
The Scientist spoke with VIPRA’s Ashok Srinivasan, a computer scientist ...
