One flight, 52 Covid cases


A couple of weeks ago, the WSJ published an article titled “Dozens of Coronavirus cases are Linked to One Flight”. It described how 52 people (as of the writing of the article) who had flown from New Delhi to Hong Kong tested positive for Covid-19 after they arrived in Hong Kong, even though they had all tested negative as a condition of being allowed on the flight (they had to have been tested within three days of the flight). The flight occurred while India was experiencing the current surge in cases, but before it was in the crisis that it is in now.

Of course, this was a six-hour flight, and the risk goes up the longer the flight (this is one reason why I don’t now want my wife, who has been in Vietnam since before the pandemic, to come back to the US now. It requires two flights, one of over three hours and one of about 15 hours, from Hong Kong to Chicago. In Vietnam, they recently passed 2,000 cases for the total pandemic, and total deaths have remained at 35 for at least 5-6 months. This week, they had a day with 20 total new cases, and as a result they locked down some parts of the country, including hers. A different world, it seems. But they’re deadly afraid of spread from India, even though they’re basically not letting anybody into the country – even Vietnamese citizens. They can control air travel, but they’re worried about people coming down the Mekong River from Cambodia. There’s no way they can prevent that).

Keep in mind that everyone on the plane wore masks, except for eating. But also keep in mind that the most dangerous part of air travel these days might well be the airports, not the plane ride itself. My daughter recently flew out of Dulles and said that, given the lack of precautions in the airport (including packing a bunch of people together outside), she wondered if they’d even heard there was a pandemic on.

Perhaps not.

The numbers

These numbers were updated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for April 25.

Month

Deaths reported during month

Avg. deaths per day during period

Deaths as percentage of previous month’s

Month of March 2020

4,058

131

 

Month of April

59,812

1,994

1,474%

Month of May

42,327

1,365

71%

Month of June

23,925

798

57%

Month of July

26,649

860

111%

Month of August

30,970

999

116%

Month of Sept.

22,809

760

75%

Month of Oct.

24,332

785

107%

Month of Nov.

38,293

1,276

157%

Month of Dec.

79,850

2,576

209%

Total 2020

354,215

1,154

 

Month of Jan. 2021

98,064

3,163

123%

Month of Feb.

68,918

2,461

70%

Month of March

72,693

2,345

105%

Month of April

47,593

1,598

66%

Total Pandemic so far

591,069

1,359

 

 

I. Total deaths

Average deaths last seven days: 702

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 0.8%

II. Total reported cases

Total US reported cases as of yesterday: 33,191,054

Increase in reported cases last 7 days: 363,465 (= 51,924/day)

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 1.1%  

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com.

 

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