研究表明，机场的总体卫生状况对流行病的传播有着巨大的影响

研究表明，机场的总体卫生状况对流行病的传播有着巨大的影响

People really suck at washing their hands. In fact, research shows that only about 70 percent of people wash their hands after going to the toilet.

人们真的不擅长洗手。事实上，研究表明，只有大约70%的人在上完厕所后洗手。

The inescapable grossness of that staggering statistic borders on being comical. But there's really nothing funny about it, considering people around the world die every day from infectious diseases that could be dramatically mitigated if only people bothered to practise good hand hygiene.

这一惊人的统计数字不可避免地显得粗鄙可笑。但这真的没什么好笑的，想想世界各地每天都有人死于传染性疾病，如果人们愿意保持良好的手部卫生，这些疾病本可以得到显著缓解。

"Seventy percent of the people who go to the toilet wash their hands afterwards," says physicist and data scientist Christos Nicolaides from the University of Cyprus and MIT.

塞浦路斯大学和麻省理工学院的物理学家和数据科学家克里斯托·尼克莱德斯说:“70%上厕所的人事后都会洗手。”

"The other 30 percent don't. And of those that do, only 50 percent do it right."

“另外30%的人没有。而在洗手的那些人中，只有50%做对了。”

What are the real-life consequences of this abject failure to keep our hands clean? They're dire, new research from Nicolaides and his team suggests – particularly with regard to the way that contagion can rapidly spread throughout the world due to air travel, which has the power to turn epidemics into pandemics, and frighteningly quickly.

这种可悲的洗手失败在现实生活中会产生什么后果呢?来自尼克莱德斯和他的团队的最新研究表明，它们是可怕的——特别是关于传染病可以通过空中旅行在世界范围内迅速传播的方式，空中旅行具有将流行病转变成大流行的能力，而且速度快得可怕。

That's something health authorities around the world are desperately trying to prevent right now in the grim midst of the Wuhan coronavirus. And it's something we can help with, the new study finds, if only people washed their hands better at airports.

在武汉冠状病毒肆虐的情况下，世界各地的卫生部门正在竭尽全力防止这种情况的发生。这项新研究发现，只要人们在机场能更好地洗手，我们就能在这方面提供帮助。

Using epidemiological modelling and Monte Carlo simulations, the researchers calculated that increasing the amount of people with clean hands in airports would significantly lower the transmission of infections, lowering the likelihood of epidemics turning into pandemics.

通过流行病学建模和蒙特卡罗模拟，研究人员计算出，在机场增加洗手人数将显著降低感染的传播，降低流行病演变为大流行的可能性。

"Our simulation results suggests that, if we were able to increase the level of hand cleanliness at all airports in the world from 20 percent to 30 percent … a potential infectious disease would have a worldwide impact that is about 24 percent smaller," the authors write in their study.

作者在他们的研究中写道:“我们的模拟结果表明，如果我们能够将全球所有机场的手部清洁水平从20%提高到30%……那么一种潜在的传染病对全球的影响将减少24%左右。”

"Increasing the level of hand cleanliness to 60 percent at all airports in the world would have a reduction of 69 percent in the impact of a potential disease spreading."

“将全球所有机场的手部清洁度提高到60%，将减少69%的潜在疾病传播的影响。”

Even though we should all be washing our hands already (and should know the importance of it), the authors acknowledge that due to reasons of practicality and cost, it wouldn't be easy to quickly ramp up hand hygiene practice and awareness in all airports.

尽管我们都应该洗手(而且应该知道洗手的重要性)，但作者承认，由于实用性和成本的原因，在所有机场迅速加强手卫生实践和意识并不容易。

But the study also looked at the hypothetical effects of improving hand cleanliness at just the 10 most pivotal airports in the world for reducing infection transmissibility. Even if hand-washing was only increased at those 10 locations, disease spreading would decrease significantly, from 45 percent to 37 percent.

不过，这项研究还考察了在世界上10个最关键的机场改善手部清洁度以降低感染传播率的假设效果。即使只在这10个地点增加洗手，疾病传播也会显著减少，从45%下降到37%。

The findings are reported in Risk Analysis.

研究结果发表在《风险分析》杂志上。