So there are coronavirus patients being flown into Omaha’s Eppley airport for transfer to a quarantine facility at Camp Ashland. I tracked a 747-400 yesterday that was the quarantine flight, which may be the largest plane ever to land at Eppley.
My questions are these: what would the internal configuration of the 747-400 look like? Are there small beds that would snap into the 747? Would there be rows of seats for the doctors / nurses or a seat next to each bed?
How do the pilots and crew stay safe from contamination? What happens to the plane when the coronavirus slows down? Does this plane sit in the desert, waiting for the next bug to flare up? Or does it get decontaminated and go back to carrying cargo instead of sick humans?
Huh? I don’t believe they are flying obviously sick people–they check them before they board. So everyone would be sitting in normal seats, with very few doctors or nurses aboard. Probably everyone involved would wear face masks. The quarantine is to find the individuals infected but not showing symptoms at the time of the flight.
Well, I think that answers it, thanks PastTense. I assumed that there would be sick people on board, but it does make sense that these would be quarantine people potentially with the virus, but not yet symptomatic. I should have read about the process more before posting.
More strictly accurate it would be people who have been exposed to the virus and there is a risk they may be cooking it and not showing symptoms yet. Not sure of the circumstances of this plane-load, but an entire plane / ship / school / housing block could be quarantined because of an exposure risk, and the task of quarantine is to keep them isolated until the incubation period passes.
The last estimate I heard of the incubation period was upto 13 days, but this could be refined as more exposure cases are studied. The detail that most people don’t realise is that its a rolling incubation, so if all is good in quarantine until Day 12 and someone shows symptoms, then the clock re-sets. Hopefully the quarantine facility further segregates so that its not everyone being shut in for a further 13 days.
While I am not sure of the circumstances either, my guess is that it might be one of the two or so additional evacuations from Wuhan, China of American citizens. There is significant risk that some will be infected.
I haven’t fact-checked this, but I’ve heard that a case has turned up in the Australian quarantine facility, so they are opening a /second/ quarantine facility for the next tranche.
All of the people on the first flight were checked and rechecked at every point in the transfer. Anybody showing fever would have separated into hospitalization or a medical transfer flight.
At the former Sydney Quarantine Station, which predates air travel, when ships came with either an infectious disease case on board, or from an outbreak port within the incubation period (which varies from a few days for influenza to weeks for typhus), sick passengers were hospitalised and the exposed passengers were accommodated according to class.
The theory, which seems to have worked fairly well in practice was that on board the ship the first, second, third class passengers were unlikely to have mixed, so each was treated as a segregated population. Because technically they had not landed, the stewards, cooks etc for each class had to continue their roles while they were in quarantine.
After the quarantine period - if someone shows no symptoms and is released - are they now immune from the virus, or do they still have to stay away from (possibly) infected people?
After an infected person is treated, “cured”, and released - are they now immune from the virus, or do they still have to stay away from (possibly) infected people?
The BBC reported this morning that two people were forbidden from boarding the last UK flight out of Wuhan because they already had a high temperature.
And I think I read somewhere that those on previous flights who developed any sort of symptoms in flight were to be moved well away from the rest. The implication is that the planes just have the usual seating, no special configuration.
Patrick London: makes perfect sense. I know the 747 is huge so that certainly helps. The two levels of the 747 could act as a regular quarantine and symptomatic quarantine or similar, but that’s just speculation on my part.
Makes sense that it would just be regular seating. Does the flu move slowly enough that there wouldn’t be a need for beds? The quarantine flights are probably 24 hours or less, so a passenger that was showing signs of fever at take off probably wouldn’t deteriorate enough to need a bed in that time?
@Banksiaman - interesting info on the Sydney Quarantine Station. Interesting that the different classes of passenger were that completely segregated.
With (1) I think you have to assume there’s a (good) chance they were never exposed. So no, you can’t assume they are immune. With (2) they are probably immune, at least for a while.
This illness seems to develop slowly, with about a week of ordinary cold symptoms before it turns nasty. So I would be surprised if an asymptomatic person deteriorated to the point of needing a bed over 24 hours.
Excellent info, thanks @puzzlegal! My google-fu wasn’t very good, cool that there is already info about the bug in the scientific lit.
It looks to be a slow moving infection so unless the transport is by ship (which I guess some of it was), there’s time to get people quarantined before things get scary. I guess I’ve seen too many scary disease movies.
I don’t know if this is the same flight or plane, but in this earlier thread I posted a link to an article about a 747 used on evacuation flight. It’s a cargo plane fitted with seats for these flights.
