Background

As an emerging virus, SARS-CoV-2 and the risk of transmission during air travel is of high interest. This paper is a retrospective estimate of the probability of an infectious passenger in the air travel system transmitting the SARS-CoV-2 virus to a fellow passenger.

Methods

Literature was reviewed from May–September 2020 to identify COVID-19 cases related to air travel. The studies were limited to publicly available literature for passengers; studies of flight crews were not reviewed. A novel quantitative approach was developed to estimate air travel transmission risk that considers secondary cases, the overall passenger population, and correction factors for asymptomatic transmission and underreporting.

Results

There were at least 2866 index infectious passengers documented to have passed through the air travel system in a 1.4 billion passenger population. Using correction factors, the global risk of transmission during air travel is estimated at 1:1.7 million; acknowledging that assumptions exist around case detection rate and mass screenings. Uncertainty in the correction factors and a 95% credible interval indicate risk ranges from 1 case for every 712,000 travelers to 1 case for every 8 million travelers.

Conclusion

The risk of COVID-19 transmission on an aircraft is low, even with infectious persons onboard.

中文翻译：

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航空旅行系统中 SARS-CoV-2 传播的概率和估计风险

背景

作为一种新兴病毒，SARS-CoV-2 和航空旅行期间的传播风险备受关注。本文对航空旅行系统中的感染性乘客将 SARS-CoV-2 病毒传播给其他乘客的概率进行了回顾性估计。

方法

回顾了 2020 年 5 月至 9 月的文献，以确定与航空旅行相关的 COVID-19 病例。这些研究仅限于向乘客公开的文献；没有审查对飞行机组人员的研究。开发了一种新颖的定量方法来估计航空旅行传播风险，该方法考虑了继发病例、总体乘客人数以及无症状传播和漏报的校正因子。

结果

据记录，在 14 亿旅客中，至少有 2866 名具有指数感染性的旅客曾通过航空旅行系统。使用校正因子，航空旅行期间的全球传播风险估计为 1:170 万；承认围绕病例检出率和大规模筛查存在假设。修正系数的不确定性和 95% 的可信区间表明，风险范围为每 712,000 名旅行者 1 例到每 800 万名旅行者 1 例。

结论

即使机上有感染者，COVID-19 在飞机上传播的风险也很低。