State health officials warned residents to avoid nonessential travel this holiday season, as coronavirus spread continues to pose a threat.
Dr. Lin Chen, president of the International Society of Travel Medicine and director of the Harvard-affiliated Mount Auburn Hospital Travel Medicine Center, agreed that residents should take those warnings seriously.
“Whenever cases are going up and we don’t know what the trend’s going to be, and actually we expect the trend to go up in the U.S., the best thing to do is to defer travel for now, for one’s own safety and for the safety of loved ones,” Chen said.
Chen emphasized the number of possible exposure points people can encounter when traveling.
“You’re transiting through lots of places,” Chen said. “You can be exposed from your home to the airport even, in the airport, on the airplane, from the airplane to the final destination and also when you’re in [other] communities, there can be potential exposure.”
For those who do still plan to keep holiday travel plans in the cards, Chen said driving in one’s own car is most likely the best option, as opposed to traveling by plane or train.
“Taking precautions when you’re stopping at rest areas, in terms of social distancing, wearing masks and good hand-washing – perhaps that would be safer,” Chen said.
Chen said that another major issue involved with pandemic travel is that many people may think they are healthy when in fact they are positive and asymptomatic, which has been the case for 45% of COVID-19 patients.
“And then there happens to be a family where a couple members might be asymptomatic, and even though they all tried to be very careful, there’s still some unknown risk,” Chen said.
Chen said that for many college students looking to go home for the holidays, the situation’s safety level is more difficult to determine, especially when those students are out of state and following different rules and restrictions.
“If they are in a strictly quarantined environment with very rigorous testing, and the school campus has had very little occurrence of new cases, then that may be considered safer,” Chen said. “On the other hand, there are still days in between the testing where somebody can become positive after their last test before they go home, so you can imagine it’s just such a complicated issue.”
Chen said that if people are considering taking public transit such as bus or train, concern for virus transmission is lower with well-ventilated vehicles, and if those vehicles are not crowded with passengers.
