Researchers locked flu patients in a hotel with healthy adults and no one got sick
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With an aggressive new strain spreading across the country, this year’s flu season has been marked by a record number of hospitalizations and reportedly severe symptoms.
As people look for ways to contain the spread, new research has found that some simple factors can greatly reduce transmission.
Researchers from the Schools of Public Health and Engineering at the University of Maryland in College Park and the Baltimore School of Medicine studied the spread of influenza by placing flu-positive college students in a hotel room with healthy, middle-aged adult volunteers.
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According to a press release, the study, published in the journal PLOS Pathogens, is the first clinical trial to investigate how the flu is transmitted from naturally infected people to uninfected people.
The participants, including 11 healthy volunteers, lived on a quarantine floor of a Baltimore-area hotel for two weeks. During that time, they simulated interactions, including conversations, physical activities like yoga, and passing objects like pens and tablets from infected people to the rest of the group.
New research has experts questioning how the flu spreads through airborne transmission. (iStock)
Researchers monitored participants’ symptoms, performed daily nasal swabs and collected saliva and blood samples to detect antibodies, according to the release.
The study also measured “viral exposure” in the volunteers’ breathing air and in the ambient air in the activity room. The participants’ exhaled breath was measured using a machine called Gesundheit II, invented by researcher Dr. Donald Milton and his colleagues at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.
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At the end of the experiment, none of the healthy individuals had contracted the flu due to various factors. This included a lack of coughing, as infected students had “a large amount of virus in their noses” and only small amounts were “expelled into the air,” the researchers noted.
The researchers said that adequate ventilation was an important factor in stopping the spread of flu in this study. (iStock)
“Our data suggests key things that increase the likelihood of flu transmission: cough is a big one,” Dr. Jianyu Lai, postdoctoral research scientist and lead data analyst on the study and writer of the report, shared in a statement.
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The other factor was ventilation and air movement, as the air in the study room was “continuously and rapidly mixed by a heater and dehumidifier, so the small amounts of virus in the air were diluted,” Lai said.
The researcher added that middle-aged adults are “typically less susceptible” to the flu than younger adults.
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Most researchers assume that airborne transmission is a major factor in the spread of disease, according to Dr. Donald Milton, a professor in SPH’s Department of Global, Environmental and Occupational Health and a global expert in the aerobiology of infectious diseases.
“This time of year, it seems like everyone is getting the flu virus, and yet our study showed no transmission,” he said in the same news release. “What does this say about how the flu spreads and how to stop outbreaks?”
According to the data, there have been 81,000 flu-related hospitalizations and more than 3,000 deaths in the United States so far this year. (iStock)
Milton, who was reportedly one of the first experts to identify how to stop the spread of COVID-19, said findings from such trials are essential for updating international infection control guidelines.
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“Being up close, face-to-face with other people indoors where the air doesn’t move much seems to be the riskiest thing, and it’s something we all tend to do frequently,” he said.
“This time of year, it seems like everyone gets the flu virus, and yet our study showed no transmission.”
“Our results suggest that portable air purifiers that agitate the air, as well as clean it, could be a big help,” Milton suggested. “But if you’re very close and someone coughs, the best way to stay safe is to wear a mask, especially an N95.”
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According to CDC data, there have been approximately 11 million flu illnesses and about 5,000 deaths so far in the 2025-2026 flu season. A large portion of current flu cases are caused by the new influenza A subclade K variant.
Angelica Stabile is a lifestyle reporter for News Digital.