Lack of cross-transmission of SARS-CoV-2 between passenger's cabins on the Diamond Princess cruise ship

Pengcheng Xu; Wei Jia; Hua Qian; Shenglan Xiao; Te Miao; Hui-Ling Yen; Hongwei Tan; Min Kang; Benjamin J Cowling; Yuguo Li

doi:10.1016/j.buildenv.2021.107839

Lack of cross-transmission of SARS-CoV-2 between passenger's cabins on the Diamond Princess cruise ship

Build Environ. 2021 Jul:198:107839. doi: 10.1016/j.buildenv.2021.107839. Epub 2021 Apr 15.

Authors

Pengcheng Xu¹, Wei Jia², Hua Qian³, Shenglan Xiao², Te Miao², Hui-Ling Yen⁴, Hongwei Tan⁵, Min Kang⁶, Benjamin J Cowling⁴, Yuguo Li^{2

4}

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Applied Mathematics, Academy of Mathematics and Systems Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
³ School of Energy and Environment, Southeast University, Nanjing, China.
⁴ School of Public Health, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
⁵ School of Mechanical and Energy Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, China.
⁶ Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Guangzhou, China.

Abstract

An outbreak of COVID-19 occurred on the Diamond Princess cruise ship in January and February 2020 in Japan. We analysed information on the cases of infection to infer whether airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19, had occurred between cabins. We infer from our analysis that most infections in passengers started on 28 January and were completed by 6 February, except in those who shared a cabin with another infected passenger. The distribution of the infected cabins was random, and no spatial cluster of the infected can be identified. We infer that the ship's central air-conditioning system for passenger's cabins did not play a role in SARS-CoV-2 transmission, i.e. airborne transmission did not occur between cabins during the outbreak, suggesting that the sufficient ventilation was provided. We also infer that the ship's cabin drainage system did not play a role. Most transmission appears to have occurred in the public areas of the cruise ship, likely due to crowding and insufficient ventilation in some of these areas.

Keywords: Airborne transmission; Building ventilation; COVID-19; Close-contact transmission; Cruise ship; SARS-CoV-2.