Numerical study on the effect of diner divider on the airborne transmission of diseases in canteens

The large-scale outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 has prompted the restaurants and canteens to take corresponding measures such as installing diner dividers and controlling the number of diners and the distance between personals. At present airborne transmission has been deemed as one of the main spread routes of the respiratory infectious diseases. This paper adopts computational fluid dynamics to explore the impacts of dividers installation in two different dining environments on the distribution of aerosols exhaled by infectors and uses a modified Wells-Riley model to analyze the infection risk of surrounding diners. The results show that the effects of dividers on blocking the path of aerosol transmission and protecting the surrounding susceptible personals are limited to some extent. Meanwhile, the aerosols will gather in the breathing zone inside the partitioned space, and the next diner sitting in the previous infector's seat has a certain infection risk. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This paper explores the impact of divider installation on aerosol transmission in different dining environments, finding that dividers have limited effectiveness in protecting surrounding diners and there is a certain infection risk for the next diner sitting in the previous infector's seat.