Bad news for us in the industry
 

Watching German news (ZDF) at 19;00 with a piece on Israel , and there an Israeli medical expert was interviewed about the new UK Covid variant said that in on aircraft from Dubai a single passenger contaminated 184 others in a matter of hours but gave no more details .I cannot find confirmation on Internet other that El al cancelling all flights in and out of Israel. If this is true the whole HEPA filters narrative pushed by IATA falls apart and that will be another major blow to our industry.

While I can not dispute this one claim, you would think if this story is true and 1 pap infects 180 others on 1 flight, we would have so many more cases like these in the 1000's of flights since match last year.

Combined with no further information, I would not panic just yet..

I would say the same... except for the fact that there are new. more transmissible, variants around since about Nov/Dec. That and the fact that I have heard similar numbers in warnings from personal contacts who are senior London consultants, specifically about the new variant. Bear in mind that those doctors were working the front line of the first wave in London, they've seen plenty of covid, they haven't seen anything similar that transmits like the new one. Read into that what you will, I don't have any hard data only hearsay and anecdote.

Vaccination is now happening on an industrial scale in many countries which should slow the spread down. Getting a jab will probably be an annual event from now on and vaccines will evolve and improve as more data becomes available. The current vaccines are an emergency rush job but now we’re up and running against the virus more time can be taken to test and develop better versions.

Totally wiping out the virus is an unrealistic goal, at least in the medium term and it’s something we are going to have to live with and adapt to. The price of opening the world up again is that some people will catch the virus and some will die from it but the numbers involved should be manageable. Vaccinated countries won’t see waves of infection and mass deaths with the health services overwhelmed but there will be people in hospitals.

Travel bubbles haven’t worked, they were too fragile and it only took one case to destroy them. However vaccine bubbles could work, once two countries have a sufficient percentage of their population vaccinated, there is no reason why a vaccinated traveller with a negative COVID test couldn’t move freely.

Similar to aviation, it’s about an acceptable level of risk. If the traveller has been vaccinated he probably won’t catch the virus and if he did he wouldn’t get very sick. If he has a negative test result prior to travel he probably doesn’t have the virus but if he does, then if most of the population in the country he’s visiting have been vaccinated they would be protected from catching it from him. If they did catch it they wouldn’t get very sick.

The above would probably be an acceptable scenario for international travel to resume.

Well, that is not correct , just go to the New Zealand Covid site.
I am not trying to scare people with false rumors, just reporting what I have heard and , again if proven true will likely be a game changer in our efforts to recover in our business.
The guy making that claim is a Professor in an Hospital in Israel , Prof D, Mevorach ,in an interview to German state television ;
you can hear it here :https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/heute...9-uhr-100.html
go to 09:00 it is German translated but he speaks in English to the reporter , and yes he is speaking about the new variants , UK and SA .

You often get individual doctors popping up with claims - you can't trust them I'm afraid - you have to look at the large scale trials and people like the national authorities & WHO

Indeed and the fact that there is nothing reported on Internet about this flight will trend to believe this is the case. Let's hope so at least .

Just reviewed the original news (ZDF Heute). @ATC Watcher, I think that was a misunderstanding. The medical expert said that the person did come from Dubai by plane and that he infected 184 others. The expert did not suggest where the infections took place or that any of the persons infected was passenger on the plane. It was just an example for a person carrying the variant from abroad into the country and there acting as a superspreader, obviously more contagious than the original virus.

I might be more inclined to believe what I hear or read if it is supported by a significant percentage of scientific and medical experts. What is said by just one or two so-called professionals doesn't set off my panic button. There are many suspect "experts" in the world who simply come out with BS supported only by their own twisted beliefs and their academic titles.

The New Zealand Evidence is published in the Center for Disease Control Journal Vol 27 under the title

Genomic Evidence of the In Flight Transmission of SARS CoV 2 Despite Predeparture Testing.

The study concludes -

Evidence of in-flight transmission on a flight from the United Arab Emirates to New Zealand is strongly supported by the epidemiologic data, in-flight seating plan, symptom onset dates, and genomic data for this group of travelers who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 (passengers A–G). Among the 7 passengers, 2 (A and B) were probably index case-patients infected before the flight, 4 (C, D, E, and F) were probably infected during the flight, and the remaining passenger (G) was probably infected while in MIQ.. ( quarantine) All 7 passengers were seated in aisle seats within 2 rows of where the presumed index case-patient(s) were seated.

Combined, these data present a likely scenario of >4 SARS-CoV-2 transmission events during a long-haul flight from Dubai to Auckland. These transmission events occurred despite reported in-flight use of masks and gloves. Further transmission between travel companions then occurred after the flight, in an MIQ facility.

These conclusions are supported by genome sequencing, an in-flight seating plan, and dates of disease onset.

I received now a different interpretation of what the Israeli professor said, the contamination of a single passenger on board of a flight from Dubai had contaminated 184 others, but not clear if that was during the flight ( as I understood it) of after the flight as indeed you can understand his comment both ways.

.

For clarification: does "after" mean that the cross-infection occurred before leaving the transportation system or within the next X days (e.g. at a conference or holiday resort)?

The point of the professor was, that one person, who is infected with the new variant, can infect a real lot of people.
"recently there was one person coming from Dubai by plane, who infected 184 others, 184 people infected from only one person!"
The professor did not mention where the infections happened and did not point to aircraft or airport.

from www dot heute dot de
ZDF Heute Sendung vom 27.01.2021
appx. minute 08:00

I cannot find any report in any medical journal of 184 passengers being infected on any flight.

The New Zealand did find genomic evidence that one or two passengers had infected at least 4 others seated close to them on an EK Dubai to Auckland flight in September. This was in-spite of all 6 passengers having tested negative before boarding and wearing masks and gloves during the flight.

However much more troubling for our industry was today’s interview on the Radio 4 World at One programme with Professor Sharon Peacock.

She is Professor of Public Health and Microbiology in the Department of Medicine. She is also the Executive Director and Chair of the UK Covid Genomics Group.

Professor Peacock says the longer this pandemic lasts, the greater the chance that inside the body of one patient, of the millions of patients , somewhere in the world, a new mutation will develop which cannot be treated by the vaccines.

The news anchor suggested that the clear inference from this was that all borders worldwide should be closed until the pandemic is over to stop the spread of new mutations. Professor Peacock did not disagree.

I believe that this will turn out to be the real reason for continuing the shut down of International flights and not transmission on board.

Probably time to close this thread, based on an unfortunate misunderstanding.

Rossair

well that’s not surprising really, it’s her field of expertise. Scientists and doctors would seemingly lock everyone down and close borders until there is virtually zero cases. The economists on the other hand can see that doing so risks a complete tanking of the local and global economy. The government can’t Keep paying us to stay at home and printing money. It’s a balancing act for the politicians to try and judge. Without a viable eco only, of which business, travel, tourism and airlines and airports contribute massively, there would be no money for NHS, VACCINE research etc.
she may well be right. But there is no way we can keep the world shut down In case there is vaccine evasion. The fallout is going to be horrific if the economy doesn’t restart in the next 6 months. It seems to me the world is giving this one last big push to get it sorted along with the vaccines before accepting a certain level of virus circulating within society.

The way I see it is that since cargo flights are not affected and thus goods can continue to be exported/imported I don't think the economy would suffer that much as long as there is freedom to travel within your own country. In the vast majority of countries (there may be some exceptions I concede) the leisure industry would recover quite rapidly through domestic as opposed to international tourism. This would allow more time (i.e. more than 6 months) for a full recovery.

Go onto FR24 or similar and see the numbers of aircraft flying. Yes numbers are down since before the virus appeared, but if just 1 passenger could infect a whole aircraft full of passengers and crew I think it would have become very obvious long ago. This has the hallmark of Internet sensationalism.

surely not, be aware that a great deal of aircraft flying are cargo flights, many of them operated by what would normally be passenger aircraft. I know because we have them every day at our airport. Yes, there are passenger carrying flights too but they account for roughly about a third of the usual numbers at most. Why do you think so many aircraft are parked up / stored around the world? At my (regional) airport alone we have 22 stored at present.

If one passenger could infect a whole flight then surely with that rate of transmission, rates would rise exponentially. Any cinema or restaurant he visited would result in total infection which would be spread at similar rates by those infected.

We've managed to live with other diseases such as AIDS, TB, Syphilis, Flu, Yellow fever etc without being able to eliminate them and we're going to have to do the same with this one. Shutting down the world for 6 months isn't an option. Vaccination and precautions should keep the problem at a manageable level, total elimination isn't a practical goal at least in the medium term. Closing the borders and locking down just because a single case gets reported isn't realistic. Some people will slip through the cracks and will get sick and die even if they had the vaccine, but in very low numbers which can be coped with. ICUs won't be maxed out and relative normality can return.