COVID-19 transmission in a theme-park

  1. Elena Aruffo
  2. Safia Athar
  3. Angie Raad
  4. Md Afsar Ali
  5. Mohammed Althubyani
  6. Christopher Chow
  7. Mahmuda Ruma
  8. Chao Liu
  9. Jianhong Wu
  10. Ali Asgary
  11. Jude D. Kong
  12. Jane M. Heffernan

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Abstract

Background

As COVID-19 vaccination coverage increases, public health and industries are contemplating re-opening measures of public spaces, including theme-parks. To re-open, theme-parks must provide public health mitigation plans. Questions on implementation of public health mitigation strategies such as park cleaning, COVID-19 testing, and enforcement of social distancing and the wearing of personal protective equipment (PPE) in the park remain.

Methods

We have developed a mathematical model of COVID-19 transmission in a theme-park that considers direct human-human and indirect environment-human transmission of the virus. The model thus tracks the changing infection/disease landscape of all visitors, workers, and environmental reservoirs in a theme park setting.

Findings

Models results show that theme-park public health mitigation must include mechanisms that reduce virus contamination of the environment to ensure that workers and visitors are protected from COVID-19 transmission in the park. Thus, cleaning rates and mitigation of human-environment contact increases in importance.

Conclusion

Our findings have important practical implications in terms of public health as policy- and decision-makers are equipped with a mathematical tool that can guide theme-parks in developing public health mitigation strategies for a safe re-opening.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.04.15.21255560: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.04.15.21255560v1 on medRxiv