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A STUDY conducted in New Zealand shows that the corona virus can be spread when traveling on planes, in hotel corridors, and into housing. This still happens even if there are isolation and quarantine efforts for people who experience COVID-19.
Quoted from CNN recently, the study, which was published in the journal Emerging Infectious Disease, was carried out with careful genome tracing which indicated the spread of the virus among several patients from nine cases, despite efforts to take preventive measures. One of those infected with COVID-19 has been quarantined for 14 days after being evacuated from a commercial jet 747 for India-New Zealand in August 2020 and he tested negative twice.
Others become infected while traveling in air, even though the aircraft’s capacity is only one-third of its actual capacity and there is some distance between the passengers. Even these flights have implemented health protocols, namely the use of masks during the flight.
The patients are then quarantined in a hotel room which has a private balcony and bathroom facilities. But this study also revealed that at least two of the respondents studied were infected while inside the hotel.
Based on CCTV monitoring, one person infected with COVID-19 on the plane and the two infected at the hotel never made direct contact and were not outside the room at the same time. Even so, it assumed that certain particles were transmitting at the moment between opening a door in one room and closing a door in another.
“The [CCTV] track record shows that during the 12th day of testing carried out in the room lane of a hotel, there was a gap of about 50 seconds between the closed door in patient C’s room and the open door in patients D and E’s rooms,” the researchers explained.
They added that apart from the pause mentioned, another factor was that the room in the hotel corridor that was not ventilated also contributed to this. After 14 days of quarantine in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand, and repeated negative COVID-19 tests, several tourists were flown to Auckland to meet people at home. As a result, two of them were infected.
They have conducted trials on samples of all infected people in their study, where they found a genomic linkage between viruses isolated from patients in 9 cases.
“This discovery shows the need for a border control process between countries in an effort to eliminate COVID-19,” he added. They also stressed the need for rigorous testing and contact tracing to confirm the presence of the virus. [antaranews/photo special]
