Health officials should travel overseas with aircrew to see if pilots and flight attendants could do more to avoid contracting COVID-19, the Pilots Union Taoyuan said yesterday.
The union issued the statement after the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) confirmed on Monday through genome sequencing that three EVA Airways pilots had contracted the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2.
CECC specialist advisory panel convener Chang Shan-chwen (張上淳) said that fully vaccinated cabin crew remain susceptible to breakthrough COVID-19 infections.
Photo courtesy of EVA Airways Corp
“We hope that the CECC can dispatch disease prevention specialists to travel with us and help us realize if there is anything else we could do to reduce the infection risks when we are on overseas flight duties. This would ensure that we accurately identify things we are still missing and address them accordingly,” said union chairwoman Anny Lee (李信燕), who is also an EVA Airways pilot.
The same scientific approach was used when the nation’s athletes traveled to Tokyo for the Olympic Games, she said, adding that the union has yet to receive any reply from the center on the matter.
The union displayed photographs taken in airports in Chicago, Anchorage and Amsterdam showing that many travelers, ground service personnel, shuttle bus drivers and hotel workers do not wear masks as governments ease disease prevention measures.
“This creates tremendous pressure on aircrew, because we do not know when we could contract the disease through the transmission of droplets,” Lee said. “We are disinfecting everything, from equipment in the cockpit to items that we use in hotels. Some aircrew even take their own sleeping bags for fear of catching the virus.”
Aircrew are facing a double whammy: exposure to high risk of infection on overseas flight duties, while not being completely immune from COVID-19, despite having been fully vaccinated, Lee said, adding that they feel guilty for being a perceived loophole in the nation’s disease prevention network.
The union is also opposed to aircrew being dispatched for flight duties before they have finished their quarantine period, Lee said.
Aircrew returning from international flight duties are supposed to quarantine for five days and observe strict self-health management guidelines for nine days, but the center allows airlines to cut short the quarantine period for pilots who are assigned to other flight duties, Lee said.
This practice increases the risk of infection, she said.
“Before the CECC starts administering booster shots or finds more effective ways to prevent the spread of the Delta variant, it should mandate that crew on long-haul flights ... have to spend 14 days in quarantine upon their return, just like any other travelers returning from overseas,” Lee said.
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