fly Gradually, more and more people in the holidays. What is the role airports play in the spread of the Coronavirus?

Julian Staib

Political correspondent for Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate and the Saarland with its headquarters in Wiesbaden.

F. A. Z. Twitter

The major airports in New York, Frankfurt and Heathrow are for 75 percent of the global disease spread responsible. The more flight connections from and to the airport is, the better it can spread the disease. However, the Transmission is hardly on the plane. As an example: at the beginning of February, the first returnees from Wuhan arrived with a military machine in Frankfurt. 126 people who all came through the Exits, Screening of the Chinese. They were examined upon arrival, it was taken smears. After that, you were in quarantine to Germersheim. It turned out to be: Two persons were tested positive, even if they were largely symptom-free. However, no Transmission in an airplane took place. It had worn a mouth-nose protection.

distance in the plane is impossible for the people sitting there, still close. And when you do not eat mouth, can be worn nose guard.

Still, the risk of Infection is extremely low. This also has to do with the ventilation systems in airplanes, which are exorbitantly better than all the other means of transport. The filters more than 99 percent of the germs out. The end of the seventies there was the case that a plane had to make a stop in Alaska. The filter system has been switched off, people had to long endure in the plane. A Person was sick with the flu, and then had become infected, 75 percent of the passengers.

do you Have any concerns, now, if the people are sitting back tightly in holiday flyers?

no, because I have no concerns. The masks and the filter systems are good. Difficult when flying, the Queue at the counter, at the security checks as they arrive, you are much more likely. But the plane is in this Phase, a safe means of travel. The Transmission in the country is much more important, see the cases about now, in the case of Tönnies.

you have already qualified several times to the public the danger posed by the Coronavirus.

Yes. And I stand by that, although there was outrage against me. The science gives me the right. You can currently hardly speak yet of a pandemic wave in Germany. In Frankfurt there are since 1.2.2020 currently 1750 Diseased. This is compared with an Influenza virus very little. And the Coronavirus is comparable with that of a severe flu wave. The wave of Flu 2017/2018 25,000 people died nationwide. This is a completely different house number. At that time, all of the ventilation, the seats were occupied in the Frankfurt hospitals. This was not now at the Corona of the case. With the Virus, 80 percent of the people are getting on very well. Have a flu, some just a cold, others no problems. 20 percent have a real disease, probably less than one percent die. And unlike the Flu epidemic of death of young people is at best very rare.

you do not Have to worry about the second wave?

of Course it can happen. But I am very confident. Germany has an excellent public health care. In particular, the health departments have contributed to the fact that we were able to overcome this challenge as well. What is the hospital capacity, we have never at any Limit, unlike many other countries in the world. We are envied all over the world to our health care system.