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Corona and travel: one long-haul flight, four infections

2021-01-09T18:38:14.610Z


On an 18-hour flight, at least four passengers were probably infected with the corona virus. Experts hope the incident will provide information on safe flying in pandemic times.


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Cleaning an aircraft (in June 2020 at Gatwick Airport): which factors promote contagion and which reduce it?

Photo: Matt Alexander / dpa

Those who want to travel these days cannot do without mouth and nose protection.

It is compulsory in local transport, as well as on trains and planes.

Better safe than sorry.

However, researchers do not know exactly how great the risk of infections with the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus is in transport.

Checking this is not that easy, because in retrospect, especially with infected people who were on the move, it is difficult to say where they were infected and from whom.

Was it at the train station or gate or directly on the plane or train?

And who passed the virus on?

These questions are much easier to answer in households where contact persons are known.

In a small investigation, authorities have now detected infections that are very likely to have occurred in an aircraft, despite the ventilation system and at least partial mask use.

The outbreak provides information on what airlines and states should pay attention to in the future in order to ensure the safest possible air traffic in pandemic times.

18 hours in a small space

According to the evaluation by Tara Swadi's team from the New Zealand Ministry of Health, four passengers on an 18-hour long-haul flight from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates to Auckland were infected with Sars-CoV-2 on September 28 and 29.

The researchers report on the incident in the specialist magazine “Emerging Infectious Diseases”.

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With the beginning of the first wave of expansion, the island state has largely isolated itself from the rest of the world.

Citizens returning to their home countries have had to go into quarantine for 14 days since the first corona wave and are tested several times for the corona virus.

During this check, the experts noticed that seven out of 86 passengers on flight EK448 had tested positive during the quarantine.

They had come from five different countries and boarded the plane to Auckland in Dubai.

During a two-hour refueling stop in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, nobody left the plane.

Seven nearly identical genomes

"All seven SARS-CoV-2 genomes were genetically identical, with the exception of a single mutation in a sample," writes the molecular biologist Ali Nouri, President of the Federation of American Scientists, with a view to the total of seven infections detected in connection with the trip on twitter.

Nouri was not involved in the evaluation.

The genetic similarity of the viruses is an indication that they were part of the same outbreak.

If the passengers had already been infected in their regions of origin, it is very likely that they would have brought various virus lines with them on the flight.

Since the passengers labeled A and B were the first to develop symptoms, the researchers believe that they dragged the virus onto the plane.

They traveled together and likely infected passengers C, D, E, and F during the flight.

The seventh test positive, passenger G, on the other hand, was probably only infected during the joint quarantine, during which he shared a room with passenger F.

Placed in five adjoining rows

The Boeing 777-300ER, which holds almost 400 passengers, was a quarter full on the flight.

The seven passengers who later tested positive sat close together - in the area of ​​five adjoining rows, only one remained free.

Passenger D's seat was directly behind that of the probable index case A, passenger E was seated one seat behind the possible index case B. (diagram in the tweet).

It could not be ruled out that the passengers were infected by chance at the airport, explained Nouri.

"A much more likely scenario, however, is the in-flight broadcast, since the seven were sitting in close proximity."

It is noticeable that the virus was able to spread, although both index cases A and B and two of the four passengers who were likely infected with them stated that they wore a mask on the flight.

Passengers C and E admitted they did not.

There was no mask requirement at the gate.

An important component: quarantine after the flight

Five passengers also voluntarily had themselves tested for Sars-CoV-2 before the flight.

That was not required of the airline.

The problem: "The tests did not record the index cases," writes Nouri.

Passenger A had been checked for the virus four to five days before the flight and received a negative result.

Experts criticize that the time span between the test and the start of the flight was too long to ensure that he was free of the virus when he took off.

Ideally, test results should be requested that are only a few hours old.

The lesson from the evaluation is that several safety nets would have to be installed - tests before boarding, clearance and masks, said Abraar Karan of Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the study, the "New York Times".

"These things all went wrong in different ways on the flight."

more on the subject

  • Covid-19: Can you get infected with the coronavirus on a plane? By Nina Weber

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Nouri pointed out that the study underscored the importance of quarantine and tests after a flight.

Swadi and colleagues stated in their conclusion that it makes sense to consider all international passengers as potentially infected with SARS-CoV-2, even if tests were carried out before departure and distances were maintained and masks were worn during the flight.

At the beginning of the year, the Federal Association of the German Aviation Industry announced that the risk of infection in aircraft was probably rather low.

Horizontal air currents would be reduced to "an absolute minimum" by the ventilation systems on board, it said.

It is conceivable that in the current case the extremely long stay in the aircraft reduced the protective effect of the ventilation.

Consider all passengers as potentially infected

As early as September, two studies indicated that people can become infected with the corona virus during a flight, despite sophisticated ventilation.

However, the analyzes related to cases from March, when it was still uncommon to wear mouth and nose protection (read more here).

In Europe, all passengers six years and older are required to wear a mask on board.

However, experts point out that even before the pandemic, passengers did not necessarily follow the rules consistently.

Even if all of the aforementioned regulations were to apply, there would still be a residual risk of infections on almost all flights, said Karan.

It is more than likely that it was not only the two passengers on flight EK448 who took off the mask in the 18 hours of travel.

Any such lapse increases the risk of an outbreak.

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Source: spiegel

All tech articles on 2021-01-09

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