In Australia and Taiwan’s battle against Covid, flight crews are proving to be their Achilles’ heel

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(CNN) – Countries in the Asia-Pacific region have closed the borders and imposed strict quarantine requirements, essentially cutting themselves off from the world.

But in many jurisdictions there is one important exception to those rules: flight crew.

For months, flight crews in a number of places – including Taiwan and Australia – have managed to bypass strict quarantine regulations for other international travelers. But rule violations by aviation personnel in both places in December have raised questions about whether exemptions for aviation personnel pose an unnecessary risk to the public.

Taiwan has now tightened its flight crew quarantine regulations, something two Australian states did in December.

But it is a tricky situation. While health experts say treating flight crew differently is a loophole in an otherwise harsh frontier approach, airline industry officials say there is a need for exceptions to keep the industry going – and not to endanger the mental health of flight crews. bring.

What happened in Australia and Taiwan?

When Taiwan reported its first locally transmitted case in more than 250 days on December 22, authorities quickly pointed to a foreign pilot as the source of infection.

Authorities said a New Zealand pilot in her 60s infected a woman in her 30s after completing the required three-day quarantine required for pilots, Taiwan’s state media CNA reported. That pilot has now been fined by Taiwanese authorities for failing to disclose his full contact history and has been fired by his company.
Although the self-governing island reported its first case in January, it managed to prevent a major coronavirus outbreak – in total, Taiwan has reported just over 800 coronavirus cases and just seven deaths. Much of that success was due to its strict border approach: it closed borders to almost all non-residents in March and required international arrivals to remain in quarantine at home for 14 days.
Except for airline personnel. Under Taiwan’s previous rules, pilots only had to stay in quarantine for three days, while flight attendants had to stay in quarantine for five days – the difference is said to be that the latter group has more person-to-person interaction. Beginning Jan. 1, the crew must spend seven days in quarantine after a long-haul flight and test negative before being allowed to take off, Taiwan’s Centers for Disease Control announced Dec. 28.

Other places – including Hong Kong, New Zealand and Australia – also gave flight crew an exception to their otherwise strict border policies.

Australia’s rules differed from state to state, but previously, aircrews from Australia flying to New South Wales were allowed to quarantine at home rather than in the state-run hotel quarantine facilities, while international crews were required to quarantine in one of the the about 25 hotels. until their next flight, although they were not checked by authorities like other international travelers.

It was strict by international standards, but still much more laid-back than what other inbound travelers had to deal with – two weeks in a state-run hotel quarantined at their own expense.

But a series of incidents in December raised the question of whether that was the right approach. A driver of a Sydney van who had been transporting international flight crews tested positive in early December.
Later that month, New South Wales police fined 13 international crew members of 1,000 Australian dollars ($ 760) each for visiting a number of sites in Sydney while they should have been quarantined. And just before Christmas, a Qantas crew member tested positive after flying from Paris to Darwin and then boarding a domestic flight.
New South Wales now requires international crews to be quarantined at two designated airport hotels, where they are monitored by health authorities and police. Crew members in New South Wales must be tested before leaving, but can still isolate at home.
“We’ve said all along that it’s a huge risk to us, but it’s a risk we’re taking because we want Australians to come back home … and we want cargo to come back,” said New York’s Prime Minister Gladys Berejiklian. South Wales in December. while tightening the rules around crews. “It’s the violation of the guidelines that is the problem, it’s not the guidelines themselves, and we can’t risk that.”

Why flight crews are treated differently

Even with the tightened restrictions in Australia and Taiwan, flight crews are still treated differently from other travelers. And in a number of jurisdictions, many crew members still do not need to be quarantined at all.

In New Zealand, for example, most aircrews are exempt from the mandatory 14-day government quarantine because of the “importance of maintaining international air routes.” In Hong Kong, aircrews who haven’t visited a high-risk place, including the US and UK, can test on arrival and are free to go as soon as they test negative – much smoother than the three-week hotel quarantine in their home country. costs that other international arrivals have to pay.
Part of the reason cockpit crews have gotten an easier ride is that they are needed to keep the economy going and supply chains going. As the Hong Kong Government put it, “The exemption scheme was essential to maintain the necessary functioning of society and the economy and to ensure uninterrupted provision of all daily necessities to the public.”

Albert Tjoeng, a spokesman for the International Air Transport Association (IATA), which represents 290 airlines, said the crew was different from regular travelers – they make repeated trips, they don’t wait to get out of quarantine for the purpose of their trip and they are knowledgeable about the risks and requirements. “(The aircrew) is well aware of the vulnerability of their livelihoods to any infection control deficiencies,” said Tjoeng.

The exemptions also related to the mental health of the crew. Unlike regular travelers who may only take one trip home this year to see their families, flight crews would often take international flights. That meant they could spend entire weeks or months in quarantine effectively.

Such has been the case for a Taiwan-based China Airlines captain who estimates that he spent about 50 days in quarantine this year. He flies between Taipei and Sydney about once a month, and each time he has to quarantine for three days at each end.

The captain, who wishes to remain anonymous because he is not allowed to speak to the media, says he has handled the quarantine, but that it is a concern for mental health as well as for people who can be with and care for their families . children. The days he spends in quarantine are unpaid.

“I don’t think the whole of society, or the company, or even the (Taiwanese) CDC really cares about our mental health, they just care about public health, they don’t really care about this part of us,” he said.

Should the quarantine rules be tightened?

Health experts argue the exemptions create a potential loophole that could allow the coronavirus to sneak in to places that would otherwise have been successful in keeping it out.

“It seems to me that the risk of an airline crew becoming infected is no lower than the risk of an arriving passenger,” Burnet Institute epidemiologist Mike Toole told Australian state broadcaster ABC in December. “It’s a potential loophole, and we can’t afford that.”

Hong Kong, New Zealand, Taiwan and Australia have all been relatively successful in containing their outbreaks, in part thanks to strict border policies.

But IATA has called on governments to exempt flight crews who do not interact with the public from quarantine requirements to ensure that cargo supply chains can continue. In March, the association’s general manager and chief executive said delays in global supply chains “endanger lives.”

“Air freight is an essential partner in the global fight against Covid-19,” said Alexandre de Juniac.

IATA’s Tjoeng said strict requirements “certainly make it difficult for aircrews flying to those destinations.”

ICAO, a specialized agency of the United Nations, has also called on governments to exclude crew members of cargo flights from quarantine.

“There is an urgent need to ensure the sustainability of the global air cargo supply chain and to maintain the availability of critical medicines and equipment such as ventilators, masks and other health and hygiene products that will help reduce the spread of Covid-19” ICAO Secretary General Fang Liu said in March.

To the pilot of China Airlines, he understands that Taiwan had to extend the quarantine to put the public at ease. But he wants the rules to be consistent.

Under the new requirements, pilots who undergo their seven-day quarantine can return to work on long-haul flights after three days in quarantine. In the case of flight attendants, they must have been quarantined for five days, CNA reported. According to the China Airlines pilot, that seems to put him at risk of infecting – or becoming infected – his colleagues, something he feared during the pandemic.

“They don’t want us to get into the public or into society, they don’t want us to infect others. But it seems like it’s okay if I infect colleagues,” he said.

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