Omicron doubles Covid risk on planes, medical adviser to major airlines warns ahead of holidays

New findings come as travellers are already heading home for the holidays

The medical adviser to some of the country’s largest airlines and dozens more around the world is warning that the transmissibility of the Omicron variant means that travellers on flights face a greater risk of Covid-19 infection than ever before.

Dr David Powell, medical adviser to International Air Transport Association, made the comments in an interview with Bloomberg News published on Wednesday. The organisation represents a number of major airlines around the world, including United Airlines and American Airlines in the US.

In the interview, Mr Powell said that the likelihood of catching Covid-19 on a flight was now about “two to three times” higher than the risk posed by the Delta variant.

“Whatever the risk was with delta, we would have to assume the risk would be two to three times greater with omicron, just as we’ve seen in other environments,” he said.

“[T]he relative risk has probably increased, just as the relative risk of going to the supermarket or catching a bus has increased with Omicron,” Dr Powell continued.

As Mr Powell notes, the risk of catching Covid-19 is heightened in any indoor setting; air travel, however, typically carries a higher risk given that it involves dozens of individuals in a compact space with air constantly being recirculated throughout the cabin. Similiar heightened risks are present on all forms of public transportation, as one study published on the website of the British government concluded.

“There is a good body of evidence to associate public transport with transmission of respiratory infections from a mixture of epidemiological studies and modelling studies. While some show no association between public transport and risk, the overall weight of evidence is towards an increased risk,” reads the study.

While the Omicron variant is now commonly understood to be more infectious than the Delta variant or other previous iterations of Covid-19, there is growing evidence to suggest that it also typically presents with milder symptoms.

“Omicron is probably more, much more similar to the mild variants we’re seeing in people who have been vaccinated with Delta than anything else,” Professor Tim Spector of Britain’s ZOE Covid symptom study told The Independent.

The US has seen more than 800,000 deaths resulting from Covid-19 since the pandemic began, and the Biden administration is warning that those numbers will grow over the winter among communities where vaccine hesitancy remains prevalent.

An estimate from AAA indicated that US air travel over the 2021 holidays is expected to triple last year’s numbers as flyers are more eager to travel given the availability of Covid-19 vaccines.