Covid-19 and tracing
 

I flew back from Asia last week. I watch the new French Health minister conferences with great attention. He is good. Apparently "tracing" incoming pax from affected regions is a priority.

But when I landed four days ago on QR, I was very surprised that there was no heat sensors and no questionnaire to be filled. The vast majority of pax on DOH-CDG transited in DOH from other Asian countries including HKG, SIN, ICN. In J, two pax were coughing badly which is worrisome (and sleep disturbing). One seemed really sick. FAs did nothing and they disembarked with others without any check.
I assume that CDG performs some checks on flights arriving from mainland China (MU, CA), possibly (not even sure) on nonstop flights from HKG, SIN and ICN. But a lot of pax from the affected area use QR, EK and other one-stop airlines.

Many airports (including Italian airports for weeks) have systematic temperature checks. Why is CDG so lax? Or am I missing something.

My understanding is that you can carry the virus and be contagious even though you don't show any symptoms yet, so temperature checks are just here as a security theatre (as is most security in airports anyway :rolleyes: ). If you were only contagious while showing symptoms, it would be very easy to stop the epidemic...

As you said yourself italians airports checked passengers for weeks but even with that it's, now, the first european country by number of people with that desease.

So cheks at CDG have no impact if you don't have any symptoms even if you have the virus. They put that in place only to reassure you

The first case in Italy is a guy who landed at Malpensa without any fever or any think else... and he was checked

It's all just for show. Not everyone who has the virus has a temperature/fever, and all those who have a temperature/fever don't necessarily have the virus.

It didn't prevent the outbreak in Italy, for example (though they still haven't traced how the virus made it to Italy, so airport screening there was probably instigated "too late", i.e. after the infection had already taken hold).

There are now documented cases (1, 2 ) where people who never showed symptoms tested positive and infected others.

I understand that there are asymptomatic infected people who can transmit the virus, and that is worrying..
But even if you miss some percentage, detecting feverish ones is very useful for tracing and follow up.

Agreed - it's a good way to catch the symptomatic traveller who wishes to "evade" detection and doesn't self-isolate or report to a health professional.

But I just don't think there are many of that sort of people flying around the place.

And doing this at the airport is hardly critical - when infected people are detected, their movements and contacts will be studied; if they've been on a flight lately, the airlines will still have passenger manifests and seating details for some time. To have access to that information, it's not necessary to "catch" the person at the airport of arrival.

Of course, "catching" someone as early as possible if, of course, good - but screening everyone at airports is probably a bit excessive.

I will stop posting on coronavirus.
But with all due respects, I find France to be taking it very lightly with a major objective to avoid panicking. Multiplying fences, none of which fully effective, is the only way to containment. Covid-19 is highly infectious. Once a sick French pax has infected other pax onboard and shops/friends/family, reacting only two days later when the pax has been hospitalized is silly.
Clearly, many posters think that it is just like any other flu. A coronavirus is nothing like a typical virus such as influenza. There is no indication that it is seasonal or will not mutate..
But I hope that you right and that it will quickly be just an empty scare.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/heal...cted-1.4185548

Whatever about an island (like Ireland), you are as likely to have infected people enter countries like France by land/car/train/bus from affected regions as you are to have them arrive in an airport....