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* Scientist skipped industry event over low-risk analysis
* Describes IATA calculation as "bad math"
* Plane cabins still relatively safe - studies
(Updates with British Airways CEO comment)
By Laurence Frost
PARIS, Oct 19 (Reuters) - A campaign by coronavirus-stricken
aviation giants to persuade the world it's safe to fly has been
questioned by one of the scientists whose research it draws
upon.
Dr David Freedman, a U.S. infectious diseases specialist,
said he declined to take part in a recent presentation by global
airline body IATA with planemakers Airbus, Boeing
and Embraer that cited his work.
While he welcomed some industry findings as "encouraging",
Freedman said a key assertion about the improbability of
catching COVID-19 on planes was based on "bad math".
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 to the
unknown real number of infections.
"They wanted me at that press conference to present the
stuff, but honestly I objected to the title they had put on it,"
the University of Alabama academic told Reuters.
"It was bad math. 1.2 billion passengers during 2020 is not
a fair denominator because hardly anybody was tested. How do you
know how many people really got infected?" he said. "The absence
of evidence is not evidence of absence."
IATA maintains that its calculation is a "relevant and
credible" sign of low risk, a spokesman said in response to
requests for comment from the organisation and its top medic
Powell.
"We've not claimed it's a definitive and absolute number."
The head of British Airways directly invoked the 1-in-27
million ratio to press for a lifting of quarantines on Monday.
"We know public safety is key for the government, so it
should be reassured by IATA's new figures," Chief Executive Sean
Doyle told a UK aviation conference.
Freedman's research partner Dr Annelies Wilder-Smith of the
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine could not
immediately be reached for comment.
CLOSING RANKS
While the pandemic has seen some carriers leave middle seats
empty to reassure customers, the industry has opposed making
such measures mandatory.
Plane cabins are considered lower-risk than many indoor
spaces because of their powerful ventilation and their layout,
with forward-facing passengers separated by seat rows.
Ceiling-to-floor airflows sweep pathogens into high-grade
filters.
That understanding is supported by simulations and tests run
by the aircraft makers as well as a U.S. Defense Department
study released on Thursday.
The joint presentation with all three manufacturers
signalled a rare closing of ranks among industrial arch-rivals,
behind a message designed to reassure.
Sitting beside an infected economy passenger is comparable
to seven-foot distancing in an office, Boeing tests concluded,
posing an acceptably low risk with masks. Standard health advice
often recommends a six-foot separation.
Airbus showed similar findings, while Embraer tested droplet
dispersal from a cough. Some 0.13% by mass ended up in an
adjacent passenger's facial area, falling to 0.02% with masks.
Dr Henry Wu, associate professor at Atlanta's Emory School
of Medicine, said the findings were inconclusive on their own
because the minimum infective dose remains unknown, and risks
increase in step with exposure time.
"It's simply additive," said Wu, who would prefer middle
seats to be left empty. "A 10-hour flight will be 10 times
riskier than a one-hour flight."
Nonetheless, a commercial jet cabin is "probably one of the
safer public settings you can be in", he added. "Sitting at a
crowded bar for a few hours is going to be much riskier."
'SUPERSPREADER EVENTS'
Scientists are poring over dozens of on-board infection
cases, as well as flights with contagious passengers but no
known transmission.
In March, 11 infectious passengers on a five-hour
Sydney-Perth flight passed the virus to 11 others, according to
a paper in the Emerging Infectious Diseases journal.
Among those infected, two were seated three rows away from a
contagious passenger and one was six rows away, suggesting that
typical two-row contact-tracing might have missed them.
One sufferer on a 10-hour London-Hanoi flight the same month
infected 16 others including 12 in her business-class cabin,
according to a study by Vietnamese and Australian academics.
"Long flights ... can provide conditions for superspreader
events," the study said, adding that its findings "challenge"
the airlines' assertion that on-board distancing is unnecessary.
IATA points out that many of the flights examined by
scientists in published studies occurred before mask-wearing
became widespread and reduced infection risks.
Its presentation did concede that the 44-case tally "may be
an underestimate", while maintaining that in-flight infections
remained less likely than a lightning strike even if only 10% of
actual cases had made the count.
"That's misleading," Emory's Wu said. "Thinking about how
hard it is to identify them, I wouldn't be surprised if it's far
less than 1%. The only thing I'm sure of is that it's a
fantastic underestimate."
(Reporting by Laurence Frost; Editing by Pravin Char and Jan
Harvey)
