‘Bad math’: Airlines’ COVID safety analysis challenged by expert

‘Bad math’: Airlines’ COVID safety analysis challenged by expert

Airlines and planemakers are anxious to restart international travel, even as a second wave of infections and restrictions take hold in many countries.The Oct. 8 media presentation listed in-flight infections reported in scientific studies or by IATA airlines, and compared the tally with total passenger journeys this year."With only 44 identified potential cases of flight-related transmission among 1.2 billion travellers, that's one case for every 27 million," IATA medical adviser Dr David Powell said in a news release, echoed in comments during the event.IATA said its findings "align with the low numbers reported in a recently published peer-reviewed study by Freedman and Wilder-Smith".But Freedman, who co-authored the paper in the Journal of Travel Medicine, said he took issue with IATA's risk calculation because the reported count bore no direct relation