7 Tips for Flying and Traveling during COVID ✈????
7 Tips for Flying and Traveling during COVID ✈????Catching the COVID virus in an airplane is possible by inhaling the virus. And the regular face covering that you wear, such as a standard medical mask, won't prevent you from inhaling the covid viruses if it's in the air close to you.
Airborne Transmission -
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Most airlines require passengers to wear masks. Some airlines also take other measures to minimize person-to-person interactions, such as not serving alcoholic beverages or skipping snacks altogether. Most commercial flights these days have spotless cabin air. Airplanes accomplish this by the way they have their air intake system set up. Essentially, they have compressed air passing through the jet engines, with its temperature being super hot. That hot air is then cooled and put under pressure (450) PSI. So between the initial hot temperatures and the high pressure, the air in the cabin is very sterile, as bacteria and viruses become destroyed in that process.
And the cabin air is exchanged every 3-4 minutes, which is better than offices and homes, typically every 5-12 minutes. Newer airplanes have high-efficiency particulate air filters, meaning HEPA filters that filter the recirculated air. They can fish out particles as small as 0.3 microns, which is what an N95 respirator mask can do, as well as an elastomeric mask. Some might say that the virus is only about 0.1 microns in diameter or 100 nm. And this is true. But most of the virus in the air is going to exist within respiratory droplets. So the bottom line is that if the virus is in the air, about 95% of it will be filtered out with these HEPA filters on the plane, and the same goes for respirator masks.
When someone is expelling respiratory droplets, the ones that are more than 5-10 microns in size, those will act like ballistics and fall within 6-12 feet of them, If they are NOT wearing a mask. The respiratory droplets that are expelled are less than 5 microns. These are the ones that will stay suspended in the air. If someone is wearing a mask, it will drastically reduce the distance between that moist cloud's size and the space that moist cloud can travel, but it won't be totally prevented.
So if no one is sitting close to you, or if someone is sitting close to you but does not have the covid viruses, no worries. But, of course, people will be close to you, and it's impossible to know who has the covid viruses. And suppose that covid virus is in the air close to you. In that case, you're going to breathe it in, unless….you do tip #1, which is you wear an N95 respirator mask or an elastomeric respirator—both of these filters out at least 95% of airborne particles as small as 0.3 microns.
Right now, the CDC recommends the public to not purchase and wear these N95 respirator masks, for one, because they need to be reserved for health care workers. I don't understand how they can be in limited supply this deep into a pandemic, but I digress. But what you can do is get yourself an elastomeric respirator. This is a reusable device with exchangeable cartridge filters. Like an N95 respirator, it also filters out at least 95% of airborne particles as small as 0.3 microns. It fits tight against the user's face but is more comfortable than an N95.
Doctor Mike Hansen, MD
Internal Medicine | Pulmonary Disease | Critical Care Medicine
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