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Risk of contacting Covid on flights is 0.1%, says new study

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The risk of coronavirus infection in a flight is less than 0.1 per cent if all passengers have tested negative at least 72 hours before, a new international study has shown.

The peer-reviewed study was a collaboration between Mayo Clinic and Delta Air Line, along with the Georgia Department of Health with consultation with the CDC and was published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings medical journal at the end of August.

It showed that a negative molecular test for SARS-CoV-2 within 72 hours of international airline departure led to a frequency of active coronavirus infection of less than 1 in 1,000 passengers identified on rapid antigen test.

“When you couple the extremely low infection rate on board a Covid-19-tested flight with the layers of protection on board including mandatory masking and hospital-grade air filtration, the risk of transmission is less than one in one million between the United States and the United Kingdom, for example,” Dr Henry Ting, Delta’s chief health officer, said.

This occurred despite an average community infection prevalence rate estimated at 1.1 per cent, and while vaccination rates were much lower in the US.

Hence, even at a higher level of active community infection, “a single molecular test performed within 72 hours of departure can decrease the rate of active infection on board a commercial aircraft to a level that is several orders of magnitude below active community infection rates,” the report said.

Molecular tests detect coronavirus through viral RNA and can be carried out through a person’s nose or mouth.

Saying that we are going to live with Covid-19 variants “for some time”, Dr Henry Ting added “these numbers will improve further as vaccination rates increase and new cases decrease worldwide.”

The study used data from 9,853 passengers of Delta Air Line flights who underwent testing at Atlanta (ATL) and JFK airport in New York airport between December 19, 2020, and May 19, 2021, after an international flight from the United States to Italy.

Of them, just four people, a percentage of 0.04 per cent tested positive by both the rapid antigen and confirmatory molecular tests. One more passenger tested positive on arrival in Italy.

“This translates to a case detection rate of one per 1970 travellers,” the study said.

The majority of the passengers, 72.2 per cent, had travelled to Rome and the rest 27.8 per cent to Milan, Italy, across 129 flights.

However, the average number of passengers on each flight was 76, with an average seating capacity of 289 and load factor of 26 per cent.

Vaccinated travellers to Cyprus and those who have recovered from coronavirus in the last 180 days are not obliged to undergo testing or quarantine but must complete the Cyprus Flight Pass document before their arrival.

But they may be subject PCR laboratory sampling examination, according to the Cyprus Flight Pass website.

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