Summer Travel Q&A: Expert Tips for Staying Safe and Healthy

This episode of Transmission Interrupted was recorded April 27th, 2026.

Hello, and welcome to Transmission Interrupted.

My name is Jill Morgan.

I'm a nurse here at Emory University Hospital.

For those of you not yet familiar with NETEC, our mission is to set the gold

standard for special pathogen preparedness and response across health systems in

the us with the goals of driving best practices, closing knowledge gaps,

and developing innovative resources.

NETEC works alongside and in cooperation with the CDC and is

funded by ASPR, the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response.

On today's episode, we're going to just do something new, which is answer some

questions about summer travel and safety and avoiding all the things that can

make you really miserable when you're away from home, or even when you're home.

Nobody wants to get sick during summer vacation.

Certainly, you don't wanna have your kids miss some of the events that

they're hoping to take part in.

So we're just going to talk about some fundamentals of summer

safety and summer travel tips.

And, answer a few questions we've gotten about summer travel and some

of the pathogens that might rear their heads during summer travel.

So let's dive in.

I think one of the big things that we hear about, or that we have people

ask about with summer travel, is just what you can do to protect yourself.

And certainly, we've heard this from some of our experts in the past, but

really what's common is common, right?

The same kinds of things that can make people sick the rest of the year can

also get us when we're on holiday.

So doing things like getting vaccinated for the pathogens that

you might be encountering, or if you're going somewhere and there's

a vaccine available for a pathogen they have, think about getting that.

So certainly, we wanna have people as up to date as they can be.

Remember that in some parts of the world things like COVID-19, or

influenza may also be circulating.

So even though it's not, for instance, influenza season here

in the United States, we know that COVID-19 has not had the kind of

seasonality that influenza has.

And so it has continued to have little episodic bumps as

we've gone through the year.

Certainly we have had people across the country here, and in Canada and

Mexico, We've had quite a few measles outbreaks, so we want you to keep in

mind that not everybody you encounter is going to have been vaccinated.

And so, if you are somebody who's at risk, if you have a child at home who

is not yet vaccinated or is too young to be vaccinated, or if you have some

other immune problem that might have kept you from getting a good take on a

vaccine, we really want you to be very careful about who you're interacting

with and how you're doing that.

And what that means is really some basic fundamentals.

The things that we were taught hopefully in kindergarten which are wash your

hands, especially after you've gone to the bathroom or before you're going to eat.

But also for all the times we touch our faces during the day, right?

We probably are touching things out in our environment and then inoculating

ourselves with all sorts of cooties that we've encountered by taking dirty

hands and rubbing our noses, putting 'em in our mouth, or rubbing our eyes.

So don't self-inoculate with anything you want to avoid.

Some of the other really important things about those pathogens that

are just sort of common, we wanna practice good respiratory etiquette.

Use a handkerchief.

Use a tissue.

Cough into your elbow, that famous sort of dab position, and then make

sure you're doing some hand hygiene.

Don't be that guy, right?

Don't be the guy that everybody wishes was wearing a mask on a plane.

Wear a mask.

Take masks with you even if you're not feeling sick now.

I think having one in your bag available for you is really important, because

one of the things that COVID taught us was that source control really works.

And I think many of us in healthcare have sort of taken that for granted for years.

We know we mask for a sterile procedure or something like that to try to

keep that environment protected.

But we hadn't thought so much about just protecting each

other as we go about our days.

So, if you happen to be traveling and having a cough or having

some other respiratory symptom, please think about masking.

It really does help protect the people around you.

Obviously the ideal would be that if you're sick, you wouldn't be out

traveling and you wouldn't be out around of a lot of other people.

But we know that's not always possible.

People get sick on vacation and need to get home, and so really thinking

about having a mask with you and carrying some alcohol-based hand

sanitizer for those times you can't wash your hands is a great idea.

Alright, but what about some other specific things that

happen during the summertime?

We have a lot of people that head to beaches and waterways of all kinds,

and so we really wanna think about the threats to our health that come from

those activities, whether you're at a beach or at a lake, swimming in a pool.

And some of those are really rare, and I know people have heard about some of

these things, like the amoeba that can live in fresh water and has created

these terrible situations, especially in the south, about people having

a brain infection from this amoeba.

That's an extraordinarily rare infection.

It has to get into your nose and sinuses and so while that amoeba is in dirt

and water, it's only in fresh water and tends to be in not necessarily completely

stagnant, but more still, fresh water.

But this, as creepy and horrible as it is and a tragedy for the

people that have encountered it, that's still a very rare thing.

So one of the things we wanna do is just make sure people are being super

mindful and careful, watching their children, watching other people's

children, watching everybody, to keep each other safe in the water.

Some of the other things that can really throw us a curve when we're

encountering them at the beach, or when we're eating all the seafood

that we get at the beach, are the other sort of gastrointestinal things.

So salmonella and Vibrio specifically.

We're seeing more cases of salmonella that are drug resistant, so it's

definitely one you wanna avoid.

So that's really practicing good food hygiene, washing your hands, and making

sure you're cooking things thoroughly.

For Vibrio, it's interesting.

Vibrio, sort of, peaks during July and August when the water

temperature is the warmest.

There are like 80,000 cases of Vibrio every year, and between

a quarter and a third of those actually need hospitalization.

So, you know if vomiting and diarrhea gets you enough trouble to need

to be hospitalized as an adult you know that's a bad pathogen.

So really thinking about how you can avoid that, tends to be, again, in warm water or

when eating raw or undercooked shellfish.

And of course, the one that we think about the most are raw oysters.

The hottest summer months are when we want you to avoid eating things

like raw oysters because that warm water can cause the Vibrio to be very

active and infect the oysters that otherwise would be pretty safe to eat.

So, really thinking about those foodborne or waterborne things.

Some of those pathogens are also really easy to pass person to person

if you're not using good hand hygiene.

Thinking about those pathogens specifically, that's when you

really wanna use soap and water.

Really doing a good job of hand sanitizing, making sure

your kids are doing the same.

When we think about those sort of GI pathogens, one of the

other big ones is norovirus.

And when we think of it, and a lot of us hear about it when it hits a cruise

ship, that's really a, less common pathway, and I think the cruise ships

do a really good job of encouraging hand hygiene and providing hand hygiene.

But Norovirus really, we don't see as much in the summertime.

It peaks sort of in that November to April period.

It's much more common for us in the United States in the winter months when people

are probably passing things around and we're spending more time indoors, but

that doesn't mean it's not possible.

And again, if somebody's having nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea,

if you're a healthcare worker, don't trust their hand hygiene.

Make sure that you are doing good hand hygiene, putting on gloves and

consider anything that they have touched, potentially contaminated

with those creepy GI bugs.

One of the other questions we've gotten a lot of interest in is this

idea of vector-borne illnesses, right?

So when we think of vector-borne, certainly in the south right now, it's

started to get warm, and we've had the emergence of mosquitoes again.

And for us, mosquitoes bring mosquito borne illnesses.

We are lucky in the United States to have fewer mosquito-borne illnesses

than some of the places that we might want to be traveling to this summer.

So for instance, there are very common illnesses across the Caribbean,

Mexico, central and South America.

So a lot of the places you might be traveling to could

have outbreaks of dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya, or oropouche.

These are all things that are caused by little biting bugs,

whether it's a mosquito or a midge.

And those are things you want to try to stay away from because

they're gonna make you miserable.

And while they may not make you deathly ill, they can certainly make you wish

that you had had on some bug dope and avoided being introduced to them.

Really, chikungunya right now, there's some travel advisories

out, just with a fair number of cases across Brazil and Columbia,

but also India, Indonesia, Mexico, Peru, the Philippines and Thailand.

So a really wide swath of nice, warm places with great

beaches, but also chikungunya.

And oropouche is a new one, I think, for many of us, it's been

in the news for now a couple years.

This is caused by either mosquitoes or these little midges, these little,

small biting things, the symptoms of that are like sudden onset fever and

headache and muscle and joint aches.

And again, something that we're seeing across Central and South America.

Yellow fever and dengue are definitely mosquito born.

We know that those circulate in the Caribbean, typically a little south

of here in the United States, And there are definitely things we want to avoid.

So how do you do that?

Well, thinking about how you can avoid mosquito bites.

In many parts of the world mosquitoes are out all the time,

it's not just an evening thing.

So making sure that you're wearing either long sleeves,

which can be a drag, obviously.

Or, long pants, but also using an appropriate bug spray or bug lotion.

Trying to stay away from those places where, mosquito bites are most common.

And then things like other activities that might put you at risk or being

in areas where there are more bugs.

Really low-lying areas.

Areas where there are livestock and things like that can really be a breeding ground

for an awful lot of those biting insects.

So, certainly making sure you're using sunscreen, making sure you're using bug

spray of some kind or bug repellent, and then staying covered when you can.

So, hats, long sleeves, and long pants to keep yourself safe from those bug bites.

I think it really is important to say what's common is common, and I know I

started with that, but, what you're most likely to get on vacation is the same

stuff you're most likely to get at home.

There's some big exceptions to that, and so I think, thinking about

other things that you can avoid.

Knowing what your water source is.

A lot of people camp during the summertime and that's great, but as clear and fresh

and cold as a stream of water might look, it may harbor some things you do not want.

And that can be stuff that can even be difficult for conventional

water filtrations to take care of.

So, you know, if you're using something like a tablet or a filtration system

for your water when you're camping, just make sure that it's really

going to protect you from all the things that could be in that water.

Thinking about bug spray and sunscreen, thinking about perhaps the things

that you might encounter when you're out in big gatherings of people.

We know we've got the World Cup coming, and that's really exciting.

And we're gonna have folks from across the world here in the United States,

and they probably won't just stay in their cities where there are gonna

be games or their teams are staying.

Taking the opportunity to visit the rest of the country.

So you're likely to find visitors from all over the world wherever

you might be this summer.

So knowing that there are some pathogens out there that folks could bring with

them, or even variations of the pathogens we have here, like influenza or COVID.

It might be a little different strain than you're used to seeing or that

your immune system's used to, and so it's super important to practice those

hygiene techniques to keep yourself safe; hand hygiene, not touching

your face, covering your cough.

Very basic things like that.

One of the other things that people love to do in the summertime are

really the things like cooking out, grilling, campfires, things like that.

So, foodborne illnesses are gonna be difficult to handle in those

situations and you have to make sure that you're cooking your food to an

appropriate temperature to kill any pathogen that might be in there.

And I know that people like to have a burger off the grill and

I don't want it to be well done.

just understand that you're taking some risks with that, and that we

would like for you to think about having a good meat thermometer and

making sure that you're keeping things cold until they go on the grill.

And then eating them or packaging them up quickly after people have

had their first round so that you're not keeping something out at room

temperature that could grow other things.

So knowing your water source, making sure your food is being kept safe.

Making sure that for things like fireworks and sparklers and all that

stuff, they're really pretty from a distance, but from a distance.

Some of those things can be very, very dangerous.

And we know while we typically talk about infectious diseases here,

summertimes are really high-risk time for children with bicycle injuries and

accidents from things like fireworks.

So you really wanna look at your standard first aid.

Are you taking first aid supplies with you?

Do you know where you'd go if somebody got injured or hurt?

Those are really big things as families travel across the country.

It's just having an idea of what you would carry with you.

I think it's always a good idea to have a first aid kit, have some Tylenol

for your children or for yourself.

Maybe some ibuprofen or some other anti-inflammatory medication.

Some bug spray, and some way to help if somebody gets

stung or bitten by something.

So like an ice pack or cold pack.

Maybe a Benadryl or something else like that, that can help

with an allergic reaction.

So I think that wrapping up this idea of what can we do to stay

safe on our summer vacations.

The most important thing is just be prepared.

We're in this business all about preparing for the rare events

that we hope will never happen.

But for some of you, you'll get sick on vacation.

Your kids will get sick on vacation.

We just want you to also be repaired for dealing with that.

So thinking about having alcohol-based hand sanitizer, masks, and some

preventive things with you, like bug spray, sunscreen, Tylenol, Benadryl,

minor bandages, is really important.

Preparing ahead of time by going to your physician or going to a travel clinic and

getting vaccinated for the things that you could be vaccinated against for your trip.

I hope you have great travels to exciting places but make sure you know

what you might be exposed to there.

Making sure that you have things like tissues or Kleenex to cover your cough

and making sure your children know to cover their cough and then to do

some hand sanitizing or hand washing.

Knowing what your water source is, making sure your food sources are reliable

and that they're keeping things in an appropriate temperature for safe storage.

And really thinking about how we can, in our summertime enjoyment,

take care of each other.

So watching for things like heat exhaustion and heat stroke.

Those don't always look like people think they will, so making sure you're

keeping an eye on the folks around you and that they're not getting

overcome by heat, especially as we go into June, July, and August.

Drownings don't look like people think they do.

There's not flailing and waving of arms?

Frequently, people are just quiet, and drownings are just

such a preventable tragedy.

So again, trying to keep an eye on each other and really being good

friends and neighbors as we go about our summertime activities.

Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate.

It's gonna be a hot one.

Please think about having a supply of water for everybody who's traveling

with you and really thinking about being a responsible traveler to those

around you by not exposing people.

Please stay home or make sure that you're being very responsible if you

are the sick person, so that we're not spreading it to other people.

Whether you're on a plane, on a train, traveling by car, in a crowded amusement

park, nobody around you needs to have what you are coughing or sneezing out.

And so making sure you're covering those things and trying to be very

kind to your friends and neighbors and keeping your germs to yourself.

So we hope that you'll have a great travel season.

Enjoy yourself.

Enjoy summertime wherever your vacation travels take you, but please

do it safely, do it responsibly, and we look forward to seeing you next

time on Transmission Interrupted.

For those of you listening at home, thank you for tuning into

this episode on Summer Travel.

We hope you'll join us for future episodes on a wide range of topics from

healthcare worker safety to personal protective equipment and more about

infectious diseases of all kinds.

If you have any questions for NETEC or ideas for future shows, please feel

free to contact us at info@netec.org..

That's info@netec.org.

And you can find us on the web at netec.org/podcast where you can

also subscribe to future episodes.

we'll see you next time on Transmission Interrupted.