Infectious diseases and the air travel – a new Pandora's box?

Abstract

While traveling by plane, passengers and pilots live in a controlled, partially isolated, heated and filtered microclimate in order to provide them comfort and safety. However, due to the large number of people / m3 of air and because of the sometimes unpredictable airflow that carry germs, the passengers present an important risk especially for infectious diseases with airborne transmission; the transmission of tuberculosis, influenza, measles, MERS, SARS, and the new SARS-2-CoV in this context has been widely proven and described. Vector-borne diseases are another threat because they can travel (especially mosquitoes) in the luggage or clothes of passengers and can spread diseases such as malaria, Chikungunya fever or yellow fever at long distances. The multi-drug resistant bacteria spreading in the case of repatriated travelers after hospitalizations abroad represents another problem. Even in the absence of a truly in-flight disease transmission, air travel nowadays represents a way to spread diseases such as Ebola, SARS or animal and wildlife-related infections between different countries or even continents. Disinfection, disinsection, the use of more efficient methods of air filtering in the cabin, the strict control of the passengers at check-in and check-out represent protecting measures against these risks, whose efficiency remains to be proven.

Keywords

• epidemic
• vector
• contagiousness