A multi-layered approach has the best chance of reducing the risk of transporting COVID-19 via air travel from one nation to another, a new study has found.1
The study examined the risk of outbreaks linked to air travel between Australia, with low prevalence of the disease, and New Zealand, which, at the time of the study in early June, was free of the disease.2
Statistically speaking, the analysis by researchers from New Zealand and Germany concluded that, without interventions and with one flight per day from Australia, an outbreak of COVID-19 in New Zealand “might occur after an average of 1.7 years,” according to a report on the study, which appeared as an “un-refereed preprint” ─ that is, a study not yet subject to peer review and therefore not in final form ─ on preprint website medRxiv.org.
With a mandatory 14-day quarantine for new arrivals in New Zealand, the statistical risk would be reduced to one outbreak every 34.1 years. However,…
