The relationship between indoor airborne culturable bacteria with passenger flow in 132 traffic stations during 2019-2020, China.

This study aims to provide technical support for the development of a rational administration strategy for indoor environment and passenger flow of stations. The analysis was conducted monitor data of long distance bus stations and train/high speed railway stations from the National project. The monitor and surveyed data included indoor airborne culturable bacteria (IAB), passenger flow, area and height of stations. Data analysis involved the use of paired non-parametric tests, correlation analysis, and mixed linear regression methods. A total of 132 pairs of stations were examined in this study. Additionally, significant variations were observed in the monitoring results for the IAB and passenger flow between 2019 and 2020 (p < 0.05). Specifically, the median values of these two factors in 2020 decreased by 50.52% and 48.33%, respectively, compared to 2019. (p < 0.05). A positive relationship between the daily average passenger flow and the IAB in long distance bus stations and train stations, particularly pronounced with medium sized waiting rooms, which located in subtropical cities with a general level of economic development. The mixed effect regression analysis revealed a significant association between passenger flow (OR = 1.564, 1.288-1.898), per capita volume (OR = 0.856, 0.733-0.998), and per capita area (OR = 0.806, 0.678-0.956) with the IAB (p < 0.05) just in long distance bus stations. It is crucial to regulate passenger flow and per capita area in the waiting room of long distance bus stations to mitigate the spread of airborne culturable bacteria during infectious disease epidemics.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Wangxianliang reports financial support, administrative support, and article publishing charges were provided by the National Key Research and Development Program of China. Lili reports financial support was provided by the Special fund of Beijing Key Laboratory of Indoor Air Quality Evaluation and Control. Lili reports administrative support and statistical analysis were provided by the Opening Funds of Healthy Building Industry Technology Innovation Strategic Alliance. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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