A recent paper from China finds that the vast majority of public transmissions of COVID-19 in that country took place on various modes of mass transportation. The study examined thousands of cases of virus and traced them to 318 different outbreaks, thereby showing where people were most likely to contract the disease.
Most of the transmissions took place in people’s homes from family members or other relatives. Outside of homes, more than two out of three outbreaks were due to transport, which the paper defines to include “train, private car, high-speed rail, bus, passenger plane, taxi, cruise ship, etc.” However, beyond this statement, the paper focuses exclusively on mass transport, not private cars.
I emailed one of the co-authors of the paper, Yuguo Li, asking whether they had detected any virus transmissions in private automobiles. He wrote back saying they had not, though he admitted that some of the infections that they attributed to being in homes might have taken place in a private car. But the outbreaks attributed by the paper to “transport” were all forms of mass transportation such as planes, trains, and urban transit. Continue reading
