More than 20 flights from London this month had a passenger with Covid

More than 20 flights to Ireland from London in the first three weeks of December contained at least one passenger who subsequently tested positive for Covid-19.

Between December 1 and 18, one or more confirmed cases were recorded on 24 separate flights from the English capital to Irish airports.

The news comes on the heels of Ireland joining with most EU countries in stopping direct air travel from Britain as a new strain of the coronavirus takes hold in the south of the UK.

“The government should organize testing for all London passengers since the last fortnight,” said a source within Ireland’s contact tracing centers.

We are already too slow to identify flight outbreaks, and even when we have succeeded, we have a hard time contacting those who have sat very close to the index case.

The Health Department was asked to clarify the number of incoming flights to Ireland so far in December that subsequently confirmed cases of the virus, but had not responded at the time of publication.

Typically, contact trackers will only reach passengers in three or four rows, both behind and in front of a confirmed case.

Meanwhile, the data standard used by contact trackers here has not improved, despite assurances from management that data contained in the Passenger Location Forms (PLF) would be given access to improve the process of tracking.

In early December, the approximately 800 contact trackers currently working were informed that their cohort working specifically on flight tracing would have access to the forms before the Christmas travel rush to improve data quality.

However, the drift from airline-provided flight manifest data, on which the tracking is currently based, has yet to materially occur, according to various sources.

Last week, the Health Department confirmed that since August PLF had been accessed for contact tracing purposes only five times.

In that time, approximately 500,000 of the mandatory forms for passengers arriving by airplanes and ferries were completed, which means that the data contained in the location forms was used to track contacts in only 0.001% of the cases.

As of 29 November, Ireland has moved to the EU traffic light system, which means that many incoming passengers are not required to isolate themselves at all.

Contact trackers said that problem, coupled with inadequate information available from airlines, an increase in the number of cases and the marked increase in traffic due to Christmas could have been enough to overwhelm the tracking system.

The data contained in the passenger location forms are much more complete than those present in the flight manifests, which include name, address of stay, contact number, email, age, flight number, country of departure, duration of the stay and departure date.

It is an offense, punishable by a fine of up to € 2,500, either for not completing a form or for filling it in with misleading information.