Transmission Risk Analysis of Respiratory Infectious Diseases in Catering Space: A Case Study of COVID-19

To address the high infection risk and difficulty on respiratory infectious disease prevention and control in catering space, this study analyzes close contact and surface touch behavior of individuals utilizing video episodes, while considering four transmission routes: short-range airborne, large droplet, long-range airborne, and fomite. A respiratory infectious disease transmission model was developed, incorporating a dose-response model to calculate the contribution of each transmission route. Results show that the probability of close contact of diners and staff is 98.0% and 80.3%, respectively, with 83.0% of the interactions lasting no longer than 10 seconds. Both diners and staff touch surfaces for over 85.4% of the time. 59.6% of touches by staff are on public surface touches, which means staff prone to spread the virus within the catering space. Additionally, diners touch their mucous membrane 6.8 times higher than staff, therefore, diners have a higher exposure potential through fomite transmission. Long-range airborne and short-range transmission are identified as the main routes of SARS-CoV-2 in the catering space, accounting for 57.31% to 65.44% and 24.60% to 40.56% of the relative contribution, respectively, while the total relative contribution of fomite and large droplet transmission is less than 9.96%.