Ashish Jha is asking for a vaccination warrant for air travel. Here’s why.

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Coronavirus

“The lack of one becomes a problem.”

Dr. Ashish Jha. Jonathan Wiggs / Boston Globe, file

Dr Ashish Jha said the time has come for authorities to institute COVID-19 vaccination warrants for air travel.

“The lack of one becomes a problem,” the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health said on Twitter.

Jha broke his reasoning Sunday night, sharing his experience taking an overnight flight from Los Angeles to Boston over the weekend.

The doctor said that upon arriving at the travel gate, he noticed another passenger with a mask that “barely” covered her mouth. He said he had moved away from the area, but once he boarded the plane the woman sat down next to him.

“Sitting next to someone who is essentially maskless wasn’t great,” Jha said. “The truth is, if your nose isn’t covered, you really aren’t wearing a mask. She then started singing a video on her phone. Truly. His fragile cloth mask wasn’t doing much at this point. “

Face coverings are mandatory on planes, buses, trains, and other public transportation, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends delaying travel until you are fully immunized. For those traveling without being vaccinated, the agency advises getting tested for COVID-19 one to three days before your departure, wearing a mask during your trip, and getting tested three to five days after your trip while staying at home and in self-quarantine. for seven days.

Jha said that a flight attendant asked the woman to remove her mask, which she did.

The woman then started chatting with Jha, recognizing him from his TV appearances.

“She then volunteered to say she wasn’t going to get the vaccine,” the doctor wrote. “I tried to engage him on why. His mask fell back under his nose. We continued to chat a bit. I kindly asked him to put his mask back on. She got angry but did.

But 10 minutes later, the mask was “down again,” according to Jha. He asked her to take it off again, which he said she did while staring at him, he said.

Then the plane’s lights went out for the flight and Jha said he couldn’t see anymore.

“We sat a few inches apart for a 5.5 hour flight with his mask variable,” Jha said. “I don’t like to sit next to an unvaccinated, unmasked person for hours. Why am I worried? I’d rather not get a breakthrough infection.

Jha said that by wearing his KF94, a high-filtration mask, he was “probably safe”.

But the woman was sitting in the middle seat and the passenger on the other side was an older man wearing a cloth mask.

“Not great,” Jha said.

He said the problem is there is very little ability to control what goes on in airplanes, spaces where the air is shared by strangers for what can be long periods of time.

Already flight attendants are “exhausted” trying to control a stricter application of masking, he said.

“Asking them to do more is not sustainable,” Jha said. “But the vaccination warrants for air travel are. Canada did. We should too. Compulsory vaccine or negative test for air travel.

He said he recognized that the woman sitting next to him on the plane had “the freedom” not to be vaccinated. But the doctor argued that the older man sitting on the other side had “the right to fly without being infected.”

“We cannot expect the mitigation measures to be applied enough to prevent transmission on airplanes forever,” he said.



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