As US airlines now allow passengers to fly domestic flights without wearing masks following a decision by a Florida judge, experts are still urging air passengers to keep their masks as Omicron’s BA.2 sub-option continues to spread.
The airlines and the passenger industry have been calling for the abolition of these mandates for months. Last December, Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly said at a hearing in the US Senate committee that aircraft HEPA filters capture 99.97% of airborne pathogens.
“I think the case is very strong, the masks don’t add much, if anything, to the middle of the cockpit,” Kelly told the committee.
But an epidemiologist at the University of Saskatchewan, Dr. Nazim Muhajarin, notes that the plane’s HEPA filters are only active if the plane’s engines are turned on. During boarding, disembarking and refueling, when the engines are switched off, the filters do not offer any protection.
“HEPA filters do a really good job of filtering and ventilating. “Given that the air is not cleaned, filtered and ventilated all the time while the passenger is on board,” he told CTVNews.ca on Wednesday.
Several studies have concluded that wearing masks on board an aircraft can reduce the likelihood of COVID-19 spreading.
A UK study from May 2021 examined the likelihood of COVID-19 infection during a flight in an experiment conducted on board a Boeing 777. For a 12-hour flight, they calculated that wearing highly effective masks such as the N95 could reduce the average probability of infection by 73 percent, while masks with low effectiveness can reduce infection by 32 percent.
However, the effectiveness of these masks decreases when eating time is taken into account. If all passengers had to take off their masks for an hour to eat, the researchers estimated that the average probability of infection was reduced by only 59% for high-performance masks and 8% for low-performance masks.
Simulations examining the spread of COVID-19 aerosol aboard Boeing 767 and 777 aircraft conducted in August 2020 also found that when passengers wore surgical masks, the reduction in cough drops was more than 90 percent.
Muhajarin also noted the growing number of COVID-19s in much of Canada, as well as in the United States, and called the judge’s decision “untimely.”
“COVID-19 has not come down to the level it needs to go down before we look at flight mask mandates. “Flying is a situation where people are crowded,” he told CTVNews.ca on Wednesday.
Although masks are no longer mandatory, the US Centers for Disease Control still recommends wearing masks during flights and other indoor public transportation. US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that his administration could appeal the decision.
However, the decision does not affect flights to and from Canada, and Canadian Transport Minister Omar Algabra says there are no plans to lift Canadian federal mandates for masks for airlines and VIA Rail.
Conservatives are urging Liberals to follow the example of the Florida judge and remove the mandate for transport masks in Canada. But Muhajarin said removing the mandates would be “highly inadvisable” at the moment.
“We need to keep this going until we see the number of viruses and COVID-19 decrease,” he said.
If you plan to fly within the United States on a flight with mostly unmasked passengers, Muhajarin recommends that you be aware of the COVID-19 booster shots and keep a well-placed mask during the flight.
“Learning to live with this virus means keeping myself and others safe, not just forgetting the virus, thinking it’s gone. He has not disappeared, “he said.
Even if you’re the only one on a plane wearing a mask, Dr. Amesh Adaja, a senior scientist at the Johns Hopkins Health Security Center, says “one-way masking” can still help reduce the risk of contracting the virus, especially if a high-performance mask is well placed.
“One-way camouflage works. So there are a lot of people who are worried, but remember that if you’re wearing a well-fitting mask equivalent to the N95, I think you’re in pretty good shape, especially if you’re re-vaccinated and boosted, because that’s the most you can do. to do, “he told CTV News Channel on Tuesday.
With files from the Associated Press.
Add Comment