24left

Well, look at one of the screen shots from the AC video. It says:

"Sanitizing frequently touched areas".
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Transpacificflyer

The care program won't do much to protect crews or passengers. It doesn't address the bigger issue which is the source of the infection: People.

The airline can clean more, but that only addresses a small amount of the risk. It's all about viral load and the vitality of the virus. Yes, we have all heard that SARS Cov-2 can survive on some surfaces, but outside of places where there are repeated exposures (e.g. care facilities, subway grab bars, etc.), it is a relatively low risk because the virus will start to degrade in a few hours as it dries out. AC additional cleaning will occur too late to protect pax during the flight where the risk of infection is at its peak.

The greatest risk will be the infected pax who leave a mess in the lavs, and who circulate about the cabin. The requirement of pax to wear masks is a good start, but what about Tanya the Toucher, or Gary the Gripper? The lavatory door handles will need to be regularly cleaned in flight and there will need to be cleaning spray in the bathroom with the instruction that pax must keep the lav clean. Anyone believe that will happen? No mention of it in the media release. Asymptomatic people are going to be getting on the aircraft and sharing their infections. This includes crew. I haven't seen any reference to regular checking of personnel. Having FAs wear a plastic sheet isn't going to protect pax. One need only look at what has happened in the long term care facilities and hospitals. Despite all the PPE and precautions, some staff were sloppy, and others moved from home to home spreading the infection. There needs to be a regular testing of employees and even the public. The union and employees would support this. Most Canadians would too if they had the opportunity to access screening tests, particularly antigen (which identifies virus associated proteins.)

In the short term, until the provincial governments (Quebec and Ontario especially) help businesses in Canada roll out a frequent affordable antigen testing program, companies like Air Canada won't really be able to operate safely and passengers won't have the confidence to fly. AC can spray all the chemicals it wants, people can wear their masks, but the key piece is to identify the people who have the virus in their bodies and to isolate them until they clear the infection.

traacs

Do you think this CLEAN Care Plus includes JAZZ or Rouge

tcook052

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/air...erns-1.5562939

Air Canada's plan to introduce mandatory temperature checks for all passengers to screen for COVID-19 cases is meant to assure Canadians it's safe to fly again — but the policy raises privacy concerns, legal and privacy analysts say.

Privacy experts warn it could breach privacy laws to ask for such sensitive personal information if it's unnecessary and not evidence-based.
Canada's top doctor has said temperature testing is "not effective at all" for identifying people who have COVID-19. The government also doesn't require airlines to conduct this new screening measure.Ann Cavoukian, Ontario's former information and privacy commissioner, calls Air Canada's move to become the first airline in North America to roll out these mandatory temperature checks "ridiculous."

"It's so outrageous what they're doing," said Cavoukian, who added she fears it's an optics measure meant to make people feel more comfortable about getting back on planes.

"If I was commissioner, I would really clamp down hard and say to Air Canada, 'What authorization do you have to collect personal information?'"

canadiancow

So if it's not effective, I agree it shouldn't be done, but then I have two questions:

1. What is the privacy concern? What data is being stored, by whom, and for how long?
2. Why do so many other countries do it?

24left

This CBC article was posted by @tracon on May 11


As to your second question, there have been a number of interesting articles in a variety of publications about the difference in laws and culture in some other countries like Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea and others. (SCMP, the Singapore StraitsTimes, BBC, and a variety of medical/scientific journals).

Some writers and scientists were looking to understand why these populations were compliant with using the mandated app for tracking, for contact tracing and for letting the government check on quarantines and so on. Among the answers I read were that some of these populations are trusting in their government, many are compliant, there is a centralized health system in those countries, and so on.

There are a couple of excellent papers out there on how Taiwan had set up much of this infrastructure after SARS 1.0. Similar developments in HKG. Further, some countries required anyone entering the country to download an app permitting tracking etc.

And of course, even with the EU's GDPR, there have been comments from some leaders that they want to look at this going forward.

Perhaps in Canada with the privacy legislation, there are some who don't want their info gathered or shared. Many don't have an issue with the government tacking, tracing or even taking temperatures. Considering all of the health records are stored by the provinces, they are not 100% private - or safe.

I think the issue is some people don't like the idea of Air Canada or its representatives (GAs, FAs), or airport employees, taking it upon themselves to be the determining factors in this new "Health Theatre", and deciding who can board a plane based on what the temperature gun says. These devices are not 100% accurate, body temperature fluctuates as we know, and some people run hot anyway. These new "temperature takers" are not qualified IMHO. Further, some wonder whether AC will be collecting this temperature data, where they may store it, what they may do with it.

I was not bothered by the HKIA security taking my temperature on both of my AC trips in February. It was all very civil and orderly.
But I was bothered by the behaviour of some of the cabin crews on 2 of the 4 flights.

As has been noted here by better posters than me, NONE of this "theatre" is going to ensure that AC employees or pax or airport workers are 100% non-contagious, given that people can be asymptomatic.

If nothing else, from my perspective and working background, this will all be fascinating to watch.
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canadiancow

What info? Gathered by whom? Shared with whom?

Sean Peever

@aircanada I want answers for what the + is for please and thanks! Also, how do you have a + program before you have a regular program?

Sean Peever

Lol raising privacy concerns now? Really? Temperature checks via a mounted thermal camera have been possible (and used) in public spaces for almost 10 years.

24left

I don't know. I don't care. I am not one of those with concerns about data collection.




(maybe the regular program existed in theory, so someone counted it.)

24left

CBC published the article. I would ask them. There is also is this comment, so perhaps ask Ann Cavoukian as well.

"Ann Cavoukian, Ontario's former information and privacy commissioner, calls Air Canada's move to become the first airline in North America to roll out these mandatory temperature checks "ridiculous."

"It's so outrageous what they're doing," said Cavoukian, who added she fears it's an optics measure meant to make people feel more comfortable about getting back on planes.

"If I was commissioner, I would really clamp down hard and say to Air Canada, 'What authorization do you have to collect personal information?'"

Sean Peever

The compliance side of me (GDPR, HIPPA, PIPEDA, etc are all parts of my daily job) says that - if all you do is check someone's temperature with a no-touch method, without asking their name, or ticket or anything, at the point of boarding, and don't store that information at all, just a simple hand-held check that's not connected to anything, the privacy commissioner actually has no say in the matter. And that's because no personal information is being asked and no personal information is being collected or stored or processed in any way that can be identified back to a person.

Transpacificflyer

I am one of the people who has scoffed at the temperature screening and said it is a waste of time, but maybe we are approaching this from the wrong perspective and are too focused on the big numbers. The history of recent infectious disease management has been one of advancement through small steps.

The AC press release contained the following;
Customers travelling on Air Canada flights will be subject to an infra-red temperature check at all airports, the first airline in the Americas to announce such measures system-wide. The non-invasive procedure will complement the existing government-mandated health questionnaire currently completed by all travellers to determine their fitness to fly. Customers who are deemed unfit to travel will be rebooked at no cost but be required to obtain medical clearance prior to travel.
This is in effect an "exit" check.

Let's have a look at one of the recent negative reports that dismisses the usefulness of temperature screening. In January, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) released a mathematical model* that indicated that for every 100 infected travellers planning to take a 12 hour flight, only 9 would be detected at entry screening upon arrival. 9% isn't impressive is it? When I look at that number, I say, pfft, big deal. Well, what if it is focused on pax from regions that we know are hot spots or if we play the numbers game? For example, in February YYZ, recorded arrivals of; Transborder 1,034,000 & International 1,386,000. Let's be conservative and say 1% of these pax were infected. A 9% detection rate would be 2,147 pax. Let's be even more conservative and reduce that to 1/10 of 1% of the pax as infected, 9% would still identify 20 or so people. Typically we could expect that more of them would arrive from hotspots, so the distribution of arrivals would be at certain hours and days of the week. It wouldn't be an even spread through the month. 1 infected person can cause alot of harm. Airports provide an easy way to sample a large part of the at risk population.

However, included in the report was this chestnut; The model estimated that 49 passengers would be detected through exit screening before they board, but 42 infected travellers would pass both exit and entry screening undetected. The precise numbers depend on how good screening is at detecting symptoms as well as the time periods between infection and illness.
Keep in mind that this is specific to the pax being infected, and is not a general estimate using total pax numbers. The starting point is going to be a small number of pax. However, my takeaway is that the AC proposal may actually help and that we should not be too harsh.The AC proposal emphasizes exit screening and it is something world governments should have been doing at airports long ago.

There is also a really cool modeling tool that I am sure some people here are going to love. https://cmmid.github.io/visualisatio...ller-screening
link to study here. https://www.eurosurveillance.org/con...0.25.5.2000080

I am not the greatest at math, so if my calculations don't make sense, I am sure I will be corrected. My point is that after some reflection, I think we are not giving AC enough credit for its screening aspect, even if the benefit is unintentional.

canadiancow

Well that suggests this screening would catch 49% before departure. That's a long way from it not being effective.

Sopwith

The problem with all this analysis is that there is a significant segment of the population that refuse to be convinced of anything by sound science and rational thought. They�ve already made up their minds what they�ll believe based not on what is true, but what they want to be true, and nothing will change it.

AC�s intent is not to disinfect their aircraft. It is to convince a (large?) number of people that they did.