One of the biggest disruptions in the Covid-19 pandemic industry was the inability or reluctance to Array International air shipment has dropped by 48% compared to the same time last year, and that’s not surprising. Crowded airports and long flights full of passengers are enough to create anxiety at best. In the covid-19 era, it can be very stressful.
But, adventure is necessary. In response, airlines such as Delta and British Airways have taken new precautions, but empirical evidence of real passenger protection remains scarce.
A new study published last week in the CDC journal Emerging Infectious Diseases treats this topic gently.
The article is an in-depth investigation into a ten-hour flight from London, the UNITED Kingdom, to Hanoi, Vietnam, on 2 March, before travel restrictions began. The investigation reaches a business passenger who contracted the virus on holiday to Europe last week or his sister who had become symptomatic the day before the holidays.
When he later realized that the index case had traveled on this flight, Vietnamese touch trackers placed all 16 team members and 168 of the 201 passengers (the other 33 passengers had already left Vietnam). One of the team members and fourteen passengers were later discovered to be infected.
Epidemiologists quantify the threat of infection in scenarios like this by using the attack rate or the proportion of other threatened people who have become ill. In this case, everyone on the plane was “in danger. “In the end, 12 out of 20 passengers not included in the index sitting in the business elegance compartment fell ill, with an attack rate of 60% (this number differs from what is reported in the article because the original authors’ calculation is based on the overall attack rate, which includes the patient rate; on the other hand; , I’m interested to think about the threat of getting an infection during the flight. ) Among passengers seated within 2 meters of the index case, 11 (92%) subsequently tested positive for SARS-CoV -2, compared to only 1 (13%) among those farther away.
The following figure shows the aircraft of the flight seats with the seats of passengers inflamed in orange.
More confusing are two economy class passengers who have also become inflamed. An unlikely option is that they have become inflamed with a case of index at the moment. The plane room plan shows that passengers in two nearby seats were out of sight. However, this is unlikely. Since there was little network traffic in the UK at the time of the flight, having a passenger in poor health was a shame, having two would be incredibly unlikely. Different groups of teams served the economic segment and the business and premium economy segments. It is unlikely that the two economic boxes were exposed to an infected object that moved through the computer.
The maximum likely scenarios are that Economy Elegance’s two inflamed passengers had close contact with the index box at the airport or during boarding, or that air transmission allowed a small amount of drops or aerosols to spread across the aircraft. ) would also explain why transmission is so effective in the business travel compartment. With regard to this transmission efficiency, the authors claim that the observed attack rate was “at the maximum sensitive end” based on airflow models in an aircraft’s cabin. , this original document says that “between five and ten more people may be inflamed. “
This incident also deserves to be considered outlier, as SARS-CoV-2 transmission through the air has rarely been reported. Analysis of a 16-case organization on a flight from Singapore to China showed that all, so far, one of these cases had occurred. a history of Wuhan, where the virus was circulating widely and most likely contracted the infection, leaving only one case that was acquired in the direction of the plane. In numerical terms, Singapore’s flight probably had fifteen times as many people generating infectious particles, however, they resulted in one-fifth of the number of secondary cases (an overall difference of 225 times consistent with cápit). Other known cases of people in poor health have resulted in only a few cases of in-flight transmission.
The biggest weakness of the study is that the authors had no data on the use of the mask. It is very likely that most people did not wear masks, as that was before they were required and the transmission of the network outside Of China, Italy and Iran was considered rare. I flew from South Africa to Atlanta at about the same time. I don’t forget there were other people dressed in masks, but it was only a fraction, maybe 10 or 20%. In addition, the study illustrates the incomplete effectiveness of asking others to voluntarily reveal their symptoms. As it is, this study is at least highlighting the importance of dressing in a mask on board and social estating when boarding to reduce the threat of in-flight transmission.
Full policy and updates on the coronavirus
…
I’m a pinté scientist at the University of Georgia, where I’m a professor at the Odum School of Ecology and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Ecology. I fell in love with nature as a child and theoretical biology when I was a young adult. My studies use mathematics, statistics, pc models and experiments to perceive the dynamics of biological populations. I’m interested in ecological turning points, the ecology of emerging infectious diseases and extinction. My purpose is to make science that fears people, earth and the planet.