Social distancing is not enough to prevent disease spread in narrow corridors
Social distancing is not enough to prevent disease spread in narrow corridors lead image
Intuitively, the low-ceilinged, narrow hallways of hotels, offices, and cruise ships can drastically affect the dispersal of airborne diseases, making precautionary measures like social distancing important to prevent disease from spreading. Kokkinakis and Drikakis simulated disease spread from coughing within closed corridors, finding evidence that distancing is not enough to protect human health.
The researchers found that airflow within a corridor can significantly affect the dispersal of droplets. Smaller droplets, especially those having a radius lower than 100 micrometers, spread extensively across a corridor, with the majority of viral load carried by droplets between 10 to 100 micrometers. The duo concluded that distancing alone is insufficient to prevent transmission. Based on their results, they recommended additional measures such as wearing masks, limiting corridor use to one person every 20 to 30 seconds, or reducing natural ventilation to mitigate transmission risks.
“Larger droplets — about 150 micrometers — can travel 2 to 4 meters, potentially increasing the transmission risk but indicating that a five-meter distancing policy could suffice for these droplets,” author Dimitris Drikakis said.
Natural airflows could also cause pathogens to accelerate past open doors.
To simulate the droplets, the authors used high-order, multiphase computational fluid dynamics to model the spread of respiratory droplets in a corridor with natural ventilation. Two coughing scenarios, a weaker and a stronger cough, were simulated to compare the distribution of droplets under different airflow conditions, including a baseline with no airflow and cases with a 1 m/s airflow.
Future work will explore the effects of different environmental conditions, like humidity, on droplet evaporation and dispersal.
Source: “The corridor effect in droplet and aerosol pathogens transmission,” by Ioannis William Kokkinakis and Dimitris Drikakis, Physics of Fluids (2025). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0263406 .
