Most of the documented cases of spread in flight are from way back in March 2020 — before we had testing, before we had masks, before we had organized boarding procedures, before there was a high degree of awareness about not flying if you were unwell.
What about leaving middle seats on rows empty?
It’s incredibly appealing, intuitively. It does give a greater physical distance between you and the next person. But we haven’t seen that actually deliver a whole lot of benefit. But if there’s some cross airflow from the aisle to the window, or the window to the aisle, and you remove the person from the middle seat, you’ve helped the person who would have been in the middle seat. You probably haven’t helped the person in the next seat a whole lot, because it’s likely to drift across without the obstruction of that first person.
Should cabin crew wear full protective clothing, such as body suits and face shields?
Probably not. There hasn’t been a lot of passenger-to-crew transmission throughout Covid. There has been some, but it’s very, very small numbers. It’s tended to be passenger-to-passenger or crew-to-crew. And again, very small numbers of crew-to-passenger. Let’s just be stringent about the measures already in place, and wait until we have a bit more data on omicron.
What are the risks of infection at the airport?
The requirements for airflows on board are much more stringent than they are for airport buildings generally. The protections for the airline cabin are: everybody stays seated, facing the same direction, there are these physical barriers that are in the way, you have a high degree of airflow that’s by and large from ceiling to floor, minimal drift along the airplane, a little bit more drift across the airplane. Roughly 50% of the airflow is fresh from outside, 50% is recirculated, but when it’s recirculated, it’s HEPA-filtered, so it’s clean. Most of those aren’t present in the airport phase. You’ve got much more random movement, much more potential for face-to-face contact, you’ve got generally reduced airflows. Airport ventilation rates are a 10th, maybe, of what they are on the airplane.
What about children on the flight? How should families manage them?
The risk of severe illness to small children themselves from traveling is low, just because the risk of severe Covid is so low for children. It’s one of the unanswered questions with omicron. The risk is not so much to them. The risk is that they may be mildly infected, not know it, and potentially be spreading whilst they’re traveling. And so that is a risk. Getting them to keep a mask on is hard. The smaller they are, the harder that’s going to be.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.