Remember how yesterday I wrote about 125 people on a charter flight from Italy to India testing positive for coronavirus, accounting for 78% of the people tested? Well, today 173 people on a charter flight from Italy to India tested positive for coronavirus, accounting for 82% of the people tested.
Continue reading: New Record: 173 People On Flight Test Positive For Coronavirus
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Lol, I wish we would shift our attention to testing sick people rather than randomly test everyone. Singapore's foreign worker's dormitory comes to mind where more than half of the workers who live in very tight quarters tested positive, mostly asymptomatic, and this may be a similar situation. I'm just wondering why the pre-departure test didn't pick it up. It's possible different labs use different CT (CQ) values to decide who is positive, i.e maybe they have already recovered but still test positive. Perhaps India includes CT values above 30/35 while I have heard some countries only consider one positive if CT value is below 30
What type of charter is this? If it was for a group that had been traveling together I could believe that there was a cluster of cases. If it was just a group of people who all happened to meet at the airport to start a tour group on the other end I would be more surprised.
The world needs to shutdown all borders and flights for a full three months to end this dangerous virus. The vaccine, testing, and masks are not enough for the past two years.
SHUT DOWN EVERYTHING BEFORE EVERYONE GETS IT!!!
I'm starting to doubt the testing equipment and its accuracy at Amritsar airport, which I dont think gets much international flights otherwise. Can it really be so much coincidence that such a huge percentage of tests have come two days in a row from same destination airport only!
Amritsar isn’t a very common airport for direct international flights. There are travel agencies in India that offer all-inclusive / half-board package tours to European destinations, which either book blocks on traditional airlines or charter their own flights as the economies of scale work out better for the travel agencies. Think a bit like Thomas Cook or Tui in the U.K. And since these are packaged tours, the passengers / tourists are likely to be staying at the same hotels, travelling together in buses, going to the same towns, travelling with families etc. Given that context, much like we saw in the early days of how Covid impacted cruise ships for instance it’s likely that this is cropping up due to common travel plans and staff interacting with the passengers.
The death rate of omicron is the same if not less than the death rate of the seasonal flu, and that is based on how many confirmed cases which does not account for millions of people who got it and didnt test because they were either asymptomatic or were exposed and just stayed home for a week. We never shut the world off for the seasonal flu why shut it off now?
Why doubt just their testing system, why not question all testing systems. You know the quickest way to ensure someone tests more often and pays for more tests? A positive test.
Let me see if I read you correctly. You are saying that people who have been vaccinated get sick easily. Is that right? Is the same true of all vaccines, like MMR?
I think the most likely scenario here is laboratory contamination that resulted in false positives. Amristar is a small airport with relatively little international traffic, and perhaps one or two flights per day from an "at risk" country. Any contamination would make it seem like a high positivity rate for a single flight, but in reality, that may be the only flight that was tested on a given day.
A positivity rate in the 80% range is close to impossible, unless you were actively seeking out infected passengers. An in that case, there would be no way that they could find crew to operate the flight.
If this were the case, the pre-departure tests in Italy should have caught at least some cases, rather than everyone magically becoming infected during the flight only. Somewhere I suspect scam.
Bottom line is for countries to stop these farcical testing requirements and acknowledge that COVID is here to stay. Better to impose vaccination requirements as a condition of free passage, as the morbidity and mortality rates of COVID in vaccinated individuals approximate that of seasonal influenza.
Have you ever been to India? I have flown in/out and within India during this period, and I assure you that people are wearing masks, fully fitted...and some in full plastic attire.
Nor does the article address what the testing mechanism was ie: PCR vs RAT test. Given that PCR tests have a very high degree of accuracy and take significant time to process, I doubt that this was the test type. If, as I suspect, it was a RAT (rapid antigen test) then the possibility of a high level of false positives is clearly possible. There is a wide degree of accuracy (from none, upwards) and it is entirely possible that cheap RATs could have been used.
These are very likely not tour groups, rather seasonal workers in farms, dairy plants, etc. Think shared rooms and zero health concerns instead of hotels and wellness breaks.
These flights are chartered by Spice Jet. Some reports suggest repatriation of Indian citizens with temporary visas for overseas travel before potential air travel restrictions. It is unclear whether testing for covid before departure was required for these passengers since they had to be repatriated and since testing was to be conducted port side anyways.
Agree with Jordan. Masks are mandatory for air travel within India. Airports don’t allow entry of passengers into terminals unless masks are worn properly. The airlines don’t require face shields and PPE gowns any more but masks remain mandatory. Having traveled during the pandemic in the U.S. and in India, the proportion of people wearing masks in metropolitan areas is significantly larger in India than in the U.S.
You are right, I have been in India various times through past year due to work and the proportion of people I show wearing mask is pretty much unanimous in DEL and BLR, and people do follow rules and don’t retaliate back with nonsense like “taking freedom away”. The same is true for most Asian countries. They understand that a global health emergency is more important then your personal pleasure and I guess it is understandable since these countries have experienced the blunt of infectious pandemics that has cropped up in the past various decades and they understand the complexity of it
Makes me question the accuracy of testing done at Amritsar. Wouldn’t be surprised if the charter airline didn’t pay off someone at the airport so they decided to get back at them in this way.
It can easily be explained by omicron in my opinion. Omicron occurs in the upper part of the respiratory system. It starts earlier in the throat then in the nose. So mostly all the tests takes place via nose 24-48h before boarding the plane. So omicron might not be noticed yet then on the nose swap. Thus boarding people who are indeed infected. While on the plane time passes between test 1 and arrival test 2, giving the virus the way to the nose, thus getting detected at arrival. Meanwhile probably some other passengers also got infected as it is highly contagious. What do you think?
Having stayed at a 5 star hotel in India for 2 weeks after Thanksgiving and during height of the wedding season there, have noticed a lot of the opposite. At least in the hotel would say mask wearing was much more lax with perhaps 50% of guests wearing it, even during crowded elevator rides and breakfast buffet.
On other hand at most other stores and shopping malls mask wearing was strictly enforced.
You are right. Labs in India that I’ve been tested at consider Ct above 35 a positive detection of SARS-Cov2.