Carriers say it no longer makes sense to have masking and testing requirements in place. Epidemiologists aren't so sure.
for international travelers and drop the federal mask mandate on flights, arguing that the measures are no longer necessary as coronavirus infections drop sharply across the U.S.
Before COVID-19 protocols are lifted on planes, a threshold needs to be set for dropping precautions — and another for reinstituting mandates if virus cases start rising again. Airline executives argue that it's time to lift mask mandates because they're no longer required in many other public environments, like restaurants and retail stores, where the risk of transmission is higher.
"Air quality is good on an airplane. However, when you're sitting side by side with someone who has a COVID infection, perhaps someone 10 rows behind you won't contract it, but it won't protect the person sitting next to you," Carnethon told CBS MoneyWatch. "If you roll back every mitigation strategy at one time, you have great potential to see an explosion of cases, and that's risky," she added.
Epidemiologist Peter Schnall, director of the Healthy Work Campaign, which focuses on the impact of work-related stress, said it's premature to lift COVID-19 protocols in the skies. In effect, this would put the burden of assessing the health risks of flying on individuals. "It was already a difficult enough job to be a flight attendant, but then to have to be a bouncer on top of that and to do so at 30,000 feet in the air, frankly it's asking too much," Scott Keyes, a flight expert and founder of Scott's Cheap Flights, a website that finds deals on airfare for its members, told CBS MoneyWatch.
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