{"id":34021,"date":"2021-04-14T18:36:53","date_gmt":"2021-04-15T01:36:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=34021"},"modified":"2021-04-14T18:36:53","modified_gmt":"2021-04-15T01:36:53","slug":"cdc-study-leaving-middle-seat-open-on-planes-could-reduce-covid-19-exposure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=34021","title":{"rendered":"CDC study: Leaving middle seat open on planes could reduce COVID-19 exposure"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study found leaving the middle seat vacant on planes could reduce COVID-19 exposure for passengers, supporting a practice that has now been abandoned by most airlines.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/click1.email.thehill.com\/hnfmjlnrfvvzdldvzscffzmmfnzpvnvggwfrlhpvvcsfqq_hwmvccbqbzvwvmsbmssh.html?a=&amp;b=38345\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/click1.email.thehill.com\/hnfmjlnrfvvzdldvzscffzmmfnzpvnvggwfrlhpvvcsfqq_hwmvccbqbzvwvmsbmssh.html?a%3D%26b%3D38345&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1618525180345000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHn8skgwBi6V0UTnTPP-JCWeiYk6Q\">research released on Wednesday<\/a>\u00a0predicted that keeping the middle seat empty on flights could reduce the risk of exposure by 23 percent to 57 percent depending on the seating occupancy model.<\/p>\n<p>The highest reduction of exposure, at 57 percent, was observed when studying three rows of passengers with and without passengers in the middle of three seats.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese data suggest that increasing physical distance between passengers and lowering passenger density could help reduce potential COVID-19 exposures during air travel,\u201d the study reads. \u201cPhysical distancing of airplane passengers, including through policies such as middle seat vacancy, could provide additional reductions in SARS-CoV-2 exposure risk.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>No masks:\u00a0<\/strong>But the study did not examine how masks could affect the COVID-19 exposure in different seating arrangements because the original portion of the study at Kansas State University was conducted in 2017, before the coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n<p>Delta Air Lines is the only U.S. airline that is currently blocking passengers from booking middle seats but has announced the seats will become available starting in May.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Centers for Disease Control and&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34021"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34022,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34021\/revisions\/34022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}