More flights with Covid-positive passengers than previously thought: report

The number of passenger flights with a person infected with the coronavirus onboard may be much higher than the maximum of 9 percent the Netherlands' aerospace center NLR assumes, BNR reports based on research by data analyst Bart Bolkestein.

Bolkestein looked at over 1,400 flights from 19 countries to Canada in the month of July. "24 percent of the flights were subsequently reported to have had someone with a coronavirus infection. If you extrapolate those figures to flights from the Netherlands, for example flights from Amsterdam are at 36 percent," he said to BNR.

According to Bolkestein, this shows that somewhere there is a hole in the Testing for Travel system. People with a coronavirus infection may end up on a flight, for example, if their test was not taken properly or if they contracted the virus after getting tested. Test results are valid for 24 hours.

It is necessary to look at where the gaps in the system may be, he said.