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Frankfurt Airport (archive picture): Not every quick test is reliable
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Frank Rumpenhorst / picture alliance / dpa
After 61 corona infections were discovered on board two KLM planes from South Africa at Amsterdam Airport, the Dutch epidemiologist Amrish Baidjoe expects new problems for global travel.
The proportion of positive cases was strikingly high, although 3G rules applied to entry into the Netherlands, said the research director at the Luxembourg headquarters of Doctors Without Borders in an interview with SPIEGEL.
This suggests "that there may be many asymptomatic people who slip through the net" - for example because tests do not work.
According to Baidjoe, it is therefore likely that people infected with corona with flights from South Africa have also entered Germany in the past few days without this being discovered.
The possibly highly contagious variant Omikron (B1.1.529) is rampant in parts of South Africa.
It is only from this Sunday that quarantine requirements apply to all returnees from South Africa in Germany.
Quick test: negative.
PCR test: positive.
Dutch authorities checked around 600 passengers on two flights from Johannesburg and Cape Town on Friday using a PCR test.
The reason was concerns about the new Omikron variant.
Around every tenth person examined later turned out to be corona-positive.
It is still unclear whether and how many passengers are infected with the Omikron variant.
According to its website, KLM requires travelers on flights from South Africa to present a rapid antigen test or a PCR test.
"Some rapid tests are not very sensitive," said Baidjoe - and can then identify a test person as negative even though they are infected.
Baidjoe believes that the risk of infected passengers with incorrect test results being on board aircraft is greater than expected.
In this case, there is "a high risk that passengers unnoticed transmit the virus from areas of high infection to regions with low incidence."
This could lead to new travel restrictions in cross-border traffic - especially for people arriving from countries with a high incidence such as Germany.
Airlines like Lufthansa would be hit hard.
According to the scientist, it is also likely that infected passengers from South Africa entered Germany.
Only on Friday three flights from Johannesburg and Cape Town arrived in Frankfurt and Munich.
There was no systematic check of passengers using PCR tests, at least in Frankfurt.
Just as little as with numerous South Africa machines that had landed in Germany in the days before.
"The chance is slim that there were no infected people in the flights of the past few days," Baidjoe told SPIEGEL.
He assumes that the Omikron variant has long been in the Netherlands and that Germany will hardly be spared either.
Virologist: vaccination can
"
neutralize away
" the
variant
With conventional travel restrictions, you can hardly keep the variant completely out, if it should really be even more contagious, said the epidemiologist - especially since Omikron can not only be brought in via direct flights, but also via other routes.
It is now a matter of keeping the number of these cases as low as possible.
So far it is unclear whether the variant causes more severe, similarly severe or even lighter courses of the disease.
And you don't know whether - and if so, how much - Omikron undermines the vaccination protection with the previous vaccines.
The Munich virologist Ulrike Protzer advises you to get vaccinated now or to have older vaccinations refreshed.
Freshly after a vaccination there are many antibodies - that is enough to "neutralize away" virus variants, said Protzer on Deutschlandfunk.
Booster vaccinations could "boost" the immune system if the vaccination was a while ago: "And then, we all assume, that should be enough again."