Public transportation may not be a major source of coronavirus transmission

NYC subway.
(Image credit: JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images)

At first glance, taking public transportation seems like a particularly risky activity in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, but in several major cities where ridership has rebounded, there haven't been any outbreaks linked to subways, buses, or commuter railways, The New York Times reports.

In Paris, contact tracers have not found public transportation to be linked to any of the city's 386 coronavirus clusters between early May and mid-July. The same goes for Tokyo's famously busy system, and an Austrian study also did not tie any outbreaks to public transportation in the country.

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The trickier aspect might have to do with contact tracing. Experts warn that it's challenging to trace an outbreak to public transportation because there's little chance people will remember their precise train car, and it's even more difficult to track down who else was in the same space.

A lot remains unknown, but the Times reports that riding public transportation probably falls somewhere in between walking outdoors and dining indoors on the safety scale. Read more at The New York Times.

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.