COVID-19: 'Reassuring' study on risk of coronavirus transmission on planes

Wearing masks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus was not widespread in March, when a group of German tourists took a long flight home from Israel — but researchers were surprised to find only two passengers outside the group had been infected. In a short study published Tuesday in the US medical journal JAMA Network Open, virologists at a university hospital in Frankfurt, Germany meticulously contacted all of the passengers from the flight — none of whom had worn masks at the time — to examine the actual risk posed by the presence of travelers infected with COVID-19. On March 9, 102 passengers boarded the Tel Aviv-Frankfurt flight that lasted four hours and 40 minutes, including a group of 24 tourists. German authorities were alerted that the group had come into contact with an infected hotel manager in Israel, and decided to test the 24 tourists upon their arrival in Frankfurt. Seven of them tested positive, as did another seven later on. Four to five weeks later, researchers contacted the 78 other passengers from the flight, 90% of whom responded. The researchers asked them whom they had come into contact with and what symptoms they had, and tested several of them. They found two passengers were most likely infected during the flight: the two people sitting across the aisle from the original seven cases. A person seated in the row (seat 44K) directly ahead of two of the infected tourists (seats 45J and 45H) was not infected. Story has more.<br/>