Are COVID seat barriers still needed on GO trains?
Posted June 10, 2023 6:10 pm.
Last Updated June 10, 2023 6:45 pm.
If you’ve ridden the GO train lately you may have noticed that the plastic COVID barriers that were installed at the start of the pandemic are still there.
The provincial transit agency installed the plexiglass barriers between seats in June 2020 as part of a suite of COVID safety measures aimed at making passengers feel safer and more comfortable about riding its trains and buses.
In June 2022, the province lifted its mask mandate for certain higher-risk indoor settings such as public transit, and a spokesperson for Metrolinx told CityNews at that time a decision would be made “relatively soon” about removing the barriers.
A year later the barriers are still there.
“So I think it’s something we can say goodbye to,” Dr. Dale Kalina, an infectious disease specialist at Joseph Brant Hospital, tells CityNews.
“The reality is that plastic barriers like the ones you that you’ve seen on the GO train or the ones that you see at the grocery store do a great job of decreasing the spread of diseases that are spread only by droplets,” he explains. “What we’ve learned more and more about COVID over the course of the past three years is that it’s not just droplets that spread COVID, particularly these later variants which spread a little bit through aerosols. And, those aerosols can travel around those plastic barriers, which makes them obsolete.”
Kalina also points out behaviour is a factor with many leaning or walking over to talk around the barriers.
“I think they’re just decorative [at this point]. I think that they’re not doing any harm but they’re also not doing any good. And, when they’re not doing any good, that poses the problem of how do they get maintained, what cost is there associated with maintaining those, and really what is the point?”
“If they make people feel a little bit more comfortable, then that’s what we’re talking about – a little bit of hygiene theatre.”
In a brief statement to CityNews Metrolinx says it is “creating a plan to remove them in a cost-effective way in the future.”
