title: Contact infection of infectious disease onboard a cruise ship.
abstract: 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.affiliation: Institute of Public Safety Research, Department of Engineering Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Nan
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: School of Energy and Power Engineering, Huangzhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China.
authors.forename: Ruosong
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Miao
authors.affiliation: Institute of Public Safety Research, Department of Engineering Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Hong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: JC School of Public Health and Primary Care, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China.
authors.forename: Emily Y Y
authors.initials: EY
authors.lastname: Chan
mesh_terms: D005759:Gastroenteritis / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000517:prevention & control; D006235:Hand Disinfection; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D012767:Ships; D014777:Virus Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000635:transmission