Some of my friends are married to SIA pilots. Some of my students' fathers are also SIA pilots. When these folks fly cargo flights, they do not deplane. They stay in the aircraft whilst the plane cargo is unloaded and loaded. However, passenger flights to high risk places have now resumed. One of my friend's husband is schedule to fly to UK.
Right now, these pilots are insufficiently protected. The protocol that keeps them safe is robust during the flight. After the flight the pilots need to book into a hotel room and stay there. The hotel room is often contaminated especially in countries such as the USA and the UK.
I believe that each pilot must be equipped with his own ozone air steriliser.
(1) Upon entering the room, he quickly launches the machine and waits 1 hour (outside the room) for the ozone to sterilise the room. This is a very effective way to sterilise all surfaces within a room, from tables to bedsheets. Ozone kills everything. I know because after I launched an ozone machine inside my mouldy store room, I had no more mould in that store room forever.
(2) After 1 hr, he rushes in to open the windows to air the room and encourage the ozone to break down into pure oxygen.
Right now, even if I lend my friend my machine, he cannot use it.
(A) The hotel room may not have windows that can be opened, and since ozone is poisonous, it will also kill my friend if he cannot air the room after the 1 hr sterilisation period.
(B) He is expected to go from plane to hotel room, and cannot leave the room at all. Hence, he cannot even stay outside the room whilst waiting for the 1 hr sterilisation process. He certainly cannot stay in the room because ozone is very effective in sterilising. It will sterilise my friend's lungs too.
Pilots now take unnecessary risks at the permeable frontiers of Singapore's Covid19 fight. They need to be protected, like doctors and nurses. The hotel room is the weak link. Hotel rooms must have open-able windows, and every pilot should have his own ozone generator.
2 comments:
Certainly, the hotel rooms bear some risk. But hopefully, the viral load on fomites is low. I think the primary means of transmission is still via droplets and aerosols from contact with an infected person? Hence it's most vitally important to minimize human contact.
This is purely anecdotal, but after the 1st quarter of this year, every single Singaporean whom I know who got infected with Covid-19, was infected in the US or UK. I wonder if those previously infected have as high or higher level of antibodies than what a vaccine confers.
The pilots are already minimising human contact. Tests done in quarantine rooms found copious amounts on surfaces in the rooms itself after only 24 hrs. Rooms are important vectors of transmission too, if the previous occupant was infected.
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