Healthy Sailing: Prevention, Mitigation and Management of Infectious Disease on Cruise Ships and Passenger Ferries

Varvara A. Mouchtouri, Lemonia Anagnostopoulos, Edwin R. Galea, Prashant Kumar, Niko Siilin, Juergen F. Kolb, Nikolaos P. Ventikos, Vassilis Papataxiarhis, Georgios Vosinakis, Jörn Klein, Despoina Andrioti Bygvraa, Christos Hadjichristodoulou

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle in a proceedings journalScientificpeer-review

Abstract

COVID-19 revealed a need to address known, expected and emerging infections on large passenger ships. HEALTHY SAILING (Project Nr: 101069764) provides an integrated, methodological approach to address this need. The three-year project is establishing an evidence-base for mechanisms fa-cilitating infection spread onboard passenger ships and effectiveness of preven-tion, mitigation and management (PMM) measures. Foundational activities in the first year of implementation include systematic reviews, epidemiological studies, surveys and focus groups to identify risk factors, infection frequency, outbreak dynamics, and barriers to compliance with PMM measures. Mathematical mod-els are being developed to predict infection spread onboard and evaluate measures’ impact. Computational Fluid Dynamics modelling explores airborne respiratory pathogen dispersion in ventilated spaces of cruise environments. An Integrated Health E-surveillance System is under development to perform real-time syndromic, laboratory and environmental health surveillance onboard, and will feed an AI Intelligence Immune System to produce health threat alerts, char-acterize threat levels and recommend/monitor health measures. A toolkit moni-toring cleaning and disinfection is being prepared to improve effectiveness of current practices onboard, while a toolkit for technology-induced behavior change is underway, to improve hand hygiene practices onboard.
Original languageEnglish
JournalTransportation Research Procedia
Publication statusAccepted/In press - 2024
MoE publication typeA4 Article in a conference publication
EventTransport Research Arena TRA2024: Transport Transitions: Advancing sustainable and inclusive mobility - https://traconference.eu/, Dublin, Ireland
Duration: 15 Apr 202418 Apr 2024

Funding

HEALTHY SAILING project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe Framework Programme (HORIZON) under Grant Agreement number 101069764. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. This work was funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guar-antee [grant number 10040786], [grant number 10040720]. This work has received funding from the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI).

Keywords

  • Maritime health
  • infectious disease epidemiology
  • cruise
  • ferry
  • expedition ship
  • traveller

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