In Flight

Posted on by Thor

COVID-19 has been shown to spread on airplanes by infected passengers. There is scarce reliable data, so the understanding of how exactly COVID-19 transmits during flights is limited.

Airplanes have been a primary way the virus quickly spread around the world. The most risky times are boarding and departing the plane. There are no social distancing practices when people crush into the aisles to get their luggage from overhead compartments and wait on top of one another to get off the flight.

During on board dining, everyone takes off their masks at the same time to eat. Which of course raised the risks of infection. The option to serve passengers at alternating times to maintain social distancing while eating is a logistical problem airlines are unwilling to consider.

When an airlines middle seats are left vacant, the risk of infection is reduced. A CDC study, using laboratory modeling, found that leaving the middle seat open can reduce COVID exposure by up to 57%. However airlines are packing passengers into the cabin like cattle.

Air vents are designed to push air downward and into the aisles. The air is then recirculated and mixed with 50% of outdoor air. Passengers’ exhaled air is cleaned with HEPA (High-Efficiency Particulate Air) filters, which are also used in hospital operating rooms, for example. These filters are designed to retain 99.95% of airborne particles of a wide variety of sizes, greatly reducing the risk of infection. experts say that air circulation and filtration systems alone cannot completely protect against infection. HEPA filters can only clean particles that reach it — so passengers need to minimize risks, such as wearing face masks, to help avoid coming into contact with particles that did not reach the filter. Aiming the air nozzle right at your face at full velocity, even if it is too cold, is the best option to avoid swapping air with infected fellow passengers.

Researchers focused on long-haul flight EK488 from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to Auckland, New Zealand. Using genomic sequencing, scientists found that four passengers on board became infected by one of two other passengers on the flight. Two of the passengers infected were not wearing face masks. When passengers and crew move about in the aircraft cabin, it can affect the direction of airflow, and increase the risks of infection.

Experts encourage passengers to refrain from eating or drinking while on board. This might not be an option on a very long flight so being brief and perhaps refraining from immediate consumption might reduce risks. “If a passenger briefly removes his or her mask to eat or drink, other passengers in the vicinity should keep their masks on,” said a Harvard University report on COVID risk mitigation on planes. Each moment a face mask is removed on the plane — including eating and drinking during a flight — the risk of infection increases. The longer a passenger eats, the greater the risk of infecting someone, said epidemiologist Ulrichs.

COVID Visiting Hour

Posted on by Thor

The New Zealand Auckland district health board faced criticism for allowing hundreds of visitors to see patients a day despite a strict city-wide lock down in place to help stamp out an outbreak of the highly infectious Delta variant.

Around 5 p.m. last week, Kevin, a recent patient at an Auckland, New Zealand, hospital, noticed a young woman disappear behind a curtain to visit another patient in his ward.

“It was pretty obvious what was happening in there,” Kevin, the first patient, told 1 News. They were having sex.

“It was just all a bit staggering, all very embarrassing,” he added.

Kevin alerted the staff to the sexual activity, and they quickly intervened.

“There was a view that, ‘Hey, don’t be a spoilsport,’ but it was the wider COVID question that I was raising, and in fact, I made a complaint to the staff on that,” said Kevin.

New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern, was asked by a reporter at a press conference about the sexual disregard for social distancing. Arden was at first flustered and then amused, she responded, “I would say, generally, regardless of the Covid status, that kind of thing shouldn’t generally be part of visiting hours, I would have thought.”

On September 13, 2021, New Zealand extended the strict lockdown of Auckland for another week due to the persistence of Covid-19 transmission. Auckland, the country’s most populous city which was confined with the rest of the country in mid-August after a single case of Covid-19 was reported, it will remain under a national level 4 alert until midnight on Sep. 21, 2021 Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said.