Three people in their 20s on a Delta Air Lines flight from Georgia to upstate New York have tested positive for the coronavirus after showing symptoms a day after landing.
According to the Rensselaer County Health Department, the passengers are county residents who traveled on a Delta Air Lines regional flight from Atlanta to Albany on July 6.
All of the passengers, two 22-year-olds and one 27-year-old, live in Troy, which is about eight miles from Albany. All three became symptomatic on July 7. It is not clear if the passengers were traveling together.
Health officials said there were 44 passengers on the flight.
“Passengers on the flight are encouraged to call the Health Department in their home county,” New York health officials said.
It is still unclear when or where the passengers became infected with the virus, and how New York plans to track down those people and inform them that they were around people who became symptomatic just 24 hours after the flight.
A DailyMail.com request for comment to Gov Cuomo’s office on the matter was not immediately answered.
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Three people in their 20s on a Delta Air Lines flight (file image) from Georgia upstate New York have tested positive for the coronavirus after showing symptoms a day after landing.
Warren County, New York reported a similar incident earlier this month.
County health officials said three Warren County residents flew two Allegiant Airlines flights from Florida to Albany in late June.
All three tested positive for the virus after returning home.
A passenger began showing symptoms shortly after arriving home and was quarantined.
But the other two, who are a couple, went shopping and stopped by a restaurant before testing positive, according to USA Today.
According to the Warren County Health Department, officials contacted more than 200 passengers who were on the two flights.
Delta Air Lines, which requires passengers to wear masks on board, has said the airline will continue to block intermediate seats and seating capacity.
Delta Customer Experience Director Bill Lentsch said in a statement that “reducing the total number of customers on each aircraft in the fleet is one of the most important steps we can take to ensure a safe experience for our customers and individuals. “
Research published Monday also supports that statement.
Arnold Barnett, an award-winning professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, shared his findings in a new research paper titled ‘Covid-19 Risk Among Airline Passengers: Should the Center Seat Be Empty?’
The data shows that excluding the middle seat on airplanes can reduce the risk of contracting COVID-19 by almost half.
Using publicly available statistics on social distancing and COVID-19 transmission, Barnett found that a person faces a 4,300 chance of becoming infected with SARS-CoV-2 while flying on a plane with each seat half full.
Those odds drop to just one in 7,700 when flown on a plane where tickets are not reserved for the middle seat, according to a report on Barnett’s research on ZDnet.
The travelers arrived in New York just days before Governor Andrew Cuomo made it mandatory for people arriving from a total of 22 states to be quarantined upon entering the state.
On Tuesday, Cuomo added four more states to New York’s quarantine list as it seeks to stem the spread of COVID-19 from regions of the country where infection rates are rising.
The addition of Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio, and Wisconsin means travelers from 22 states will be required to quarantine for 14 days or face a $ 2,000 fine.
The list of states that meet New York’s travel advisory metrics has grown every week as coronavirus cases continue to rise across the country.
Last month, the governors of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut announced a joint travel notice that applies to anyone arriving from a state with a positive test rate greater than 10 per 100,000 residents on a seven-day moving average. or a state with a positive rate of 10 percent or more on a seven-day moving average.
Cuomo warned that the decline in the number of infections in New York could be reversed if out-of-state travelers cause an increase in infections.
The statewide count of COVID-19 confirmed deaths in hospitals and nursing homes is approaching 25,000 in addition to 4,600 additional suspected deaths in New York City alone.
Delta Air Lines, which requires passengers (file image) to wear masks on board, has said the airline will continue to block intermediate seats and seating capacity.
The travelers arrived in New York just days before Governor Andrew Cuomo made it mandatory for people arriving from a total of 22 states to be quarantined upon entering the state.
The state reported only five deaths of COVID-19 patients in hospitals and nursing homes on Monday, but the percentage of people who tested positive for the coronavirus increased to 1.5 percent from a level of about 1 percent where it had been since mid-June.
The governor confirmed 912 additional coronavirus cases, bringing the state total to 403,175 confirmed cases in New York State.
Cuomo said the meetings over the weekend of July 4 were to blame for some of the new infections.
“ It’s also clear from contact tracing that many of the new cases in New York are the result of non-compliance over the weekend of July 4 and illustrate how quickly the virus spreads, with a part, for example, by infecting more than a third of attendees, “Cuomo said in a press release.
“I cannot be clearer: look at what is happening in the rest of the country: if we are not smart, if we do not wear masks and social distance, the cases will skyrocket.” No one wants to go back to the hell we experienced three months ago, so please stay alert.
Cuomo’s office said search efforts for state and local contacts found that just over a third of people who attended a party on the July 4 weekend in Suffolk County were infected with COVID-19.
The governor announced Monday that travelers from other states arriving at New York airports from all 22 states face a $ 2,000 fine and a mandatory quarantine order for failing to complete personal information on a tracking form that New York will use. to help ensure that people are quarantined
“It is across the country and it’s undeniable,” Cuomo said Monday as he showed reporters a chart highlighting the 39 states that are seeing an increase in the virus.
He then pointed to states like Arizona, Florida and Texas that have seen at least an 800 percent increase in coronavirus cases in the past few weeks.
Cuomo said that in addition to the fine, travelers who do not comply can be called to a hearing and “will be ordered to complete the mandatory quarantine.”
“We cannot be in a situation where there are people from other states in the country who bring the virus again.” It’s that simple, ‘added the governor.
Cases are only reduced weekly in New York, Tennessee, New Jersey, and Delaware.
While the southern and western states are seeing the largest increase in cases, infections are also increasing in the Midwest.
Minnesota cases have increased 60 percent, Missouri has increased 40 percent, and Iowa has increased 30 percent.
More than 135,000 Americans have died from coronaviruses and there have been more than 3.3 million infections.
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