What made so many passengers sick aboard an Emirates flight to New York this morning?
Flight 203 landed from Dubai at 9:10 A.M. ET this morning with 521 passengers onboard. Emergency vehicles met the aircraft on the runway. Rather than pulling up to a jet bridge, the aircraft was parked at a remote stand. The captain had radioed ahead to report many passengers onboard had complained of illness. Symptoms included high temperatures and “nonstop” coughing.
Initially, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that 100 passengers onboard had claimed to feel ill.
Approximately 100 passengers, including some crew on the flight, complained of illness including cough and some with fever. CDC public health officers are working with officials to evaluate passengers including taking temperatures and making arrangements for transport to local hospitals those that need care.
Later, Emirates tweeted that only 10 passengers were sick.
Statement: Emirates can confirm that about 10 passengers on #EK203 from Dubai to New York were taken ill. On arrival, as a precaution, they were attended to by local health authorities. All others will disembark shortly. The safety & care of our customers is our first priority.
— Emirates Airline (@emirates) September 5, 2018
But New York City officials later said 19 people were sick, with 10 being taken to a local hospital and nine refusing medical care.
What Caused It?
100. 19. 10. Whatever the number of sick, what caused it?
Earlier this morning I wrote about a recent study revealing that germs and viruses tend to accumulate in unexpected places.
Tray tables and armrests onboard airplanes are much more likely to contain germs and viruses than lavatories. But the fact that so many passengers got sick so quickly points to food poisoning. It’s always the fish, right?
Original image rendered from Airplane! (Fair Use Exception under US copyright law)
> Read More: Airport Security Trays Carry More Viruses Than Toilet Seats
Odd Twist
Initially, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office tweeted that the flight stopped in Mecca, which is experiencing a flu outbreak. While one Emirates flight to New York JFK stops in Milan and another flight to Newark stops in Athens, Mecca doesn’t even have a commercial airport (Jeddah is closest) and Emirates flights certainly do not make technical stops in Saudi Arabia. #fakenews
CONCLUSION
Hopefully all passengers onboard will make a quick recovery. My wager is that food poisoning is responsible for the outbreak of illness onboard. Thankfully, it was not something more serious.
Even though germs and viruses tend to accumulate in unexpected places, I have a feeling the same can be said for the number hypochondriacs on a plane…ahem my throat feels a bit scratchy.
You might find it funny but i indeed experience scratchy throat on airplane probably because dry ac air amd start to cough.
But if it is food poisoning, heads should roll (figuratively…).
My cousin was on that flight. Last I heard from him he was just getting a checkup and didn’t feel sick.
10 passengers Not 100
Initial report from CDC said 100 passengers.
Mayor’s office clarified that there were some passengers that were from/started their journey in Mecca, where there is a major flu outbreak. I’m not a doctor, but 100+ passengers getting the flu and showing symptoms that fast seems weird. Maybe the Mecca passengers were well into the illness by the time they got on the flight, and they were the only sick ones. Or, the fish!
https://twitter.com/EricFPhillips/status/1037359877784576000
Ah, that makes more sense!
I think your immediate article holds the clue to solving this.
https://liveandletsfly.boardingarea.com/2018/09/05/airport-viruses/
That mayorial Office is sth else. How long would it have taken someone in that office to check online with sth like Flightradar24 to know where the plane had been flying the last few weeks? Alone based on that misinformation, i choose to believe the statement from EK that 3Passengers and 7 crew got ill.
Food poisoning would make alot of sense. If they had a meal much earlier in the flight and started showing symptoms about 5hrs or so later…that’s a ‘normal’ time frame. I wish the ill pax and crew a quick recovery without any lasting consequences.
And 521 Passengers… very healthy load factors.
I dunno…food poisoning with non-stop coughing? Sounds more respiratory.
A woman on the flight stated that people were extremely sick before boarding, she felt they shouldn’t fly, and that she requested a mask at the beginning of the flight. She later tweeted that people were hacking with phlegmy coughs and spitting.
I don’t think this was food poisoning — I think it was a lot of sick people, perhaps from Mecca, with the flu or bad chest infections.
Unfortunately, not all individuals share the same norms/expectations about how to handle one’s self while sick, including covering one’s mouth and/or not spitting in public.
Food poisoning doesn’t cause coughing. The worst respiratory virus in the region right now is MERS (Middle Eastern Respiratory Virus) which is both contagious and has a >30% fatality rate. Mecca is “The Mecca” (pun intended) for this infection. That would be bad news so let’s hope it’s something milder.
Note: I am an infectious diseases MD but this is not an official diagnosis and I do not work for the CDC in any capacity.
I concur. This is not the first incident of a similar nature and ,in those others, MERS has been found to be the issue ( or at least one issue). There has been some considerable concern about returning Haj flights being a potential vehicle for a ‘breakout’ of MERS, particularly in Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, RP.
During SARS and various ‘bird flu’ episodes, passengers were screened via thermometers in every airport in this region. Even given the fundamental limitations of that approach, the deployment of those devices did result in the identification of many individuals who should not have been flying because of illness.
It is not uncommon to be on a plane and in close proximity to someone coughing and sneezing. While the common cold is the most likely cause of those symptoms, it’s not always the case.
But even the common cold can make life miserable on a short business trip or vacation. Consequently I take the usual ‘common sense’ approaches : hand sanitizer, wipes, frequent hand washing with soap, avoiding direct contact with shared surfaces. But there are limits to what can be done.
Airlines now do virtually nothing to screen ( but probably will start again in responses to this event).
Buffets are an open invitation to share DNA with dozens if not hundreds of strangers.
As a layman I wonder if any of the things we do to minimise the risk of catching a virus really work, or is it just the ‘luck of the drawer’ most of the time?
This isn’t MERS-COV simply because the disease has been largely controlled for the past 2 years with no new outbreaks or reported cases. My best guess would be influenza or RSV.
Hey Aziz – did you forget or ignore the case imported into South Korea *this* year? or the case imported into the UK *this* year? Or… “between 12 January through 31 May 2018, the National IHR Focal Point of The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia reported 75 laboratory confirmed cases of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS_CoV), including twenty-three (23) deaths.”
Taqqiyah or ignorance?
My question is unless these people were all sick when boarding , isn’t the incubation period longer than 14 hours if exposed to the flu or even a cold ? So how did they all get sick so fast .
That was my thought as well. But now people are reporting that several passengers coming from Hajj boarded already sick.
I much prefer KLM
I flew from Dubai to London Heathrow on 12 July. I rarely eat meat and had not eaten chicken for at least two weeks. I don’t order vegetarian on flights, because it is invariably Vegan and not very nice (if it was I would happily order Vegan). My only options were a beef dish and a chicken dish, so I opted for the chicken in pesto sauce. I started to feel unwell in the early hours of the morning, but it took until the following evening, when I was dining out for my daughter’s birthday, that it hit me. I suddenly felt very sick and couldn’t eat my meal. Got home and had to make a dash for the loo and couldn’t move far away from it for next few days. I also had an elevated temperature. Had a ‘sample’ sent off to the labs and was diagnosed with Campylobacter. I felt unwell for days. It ruined the birthday dinner and now I am scared to eat chicken. Has certainly put me off flying with Emirates.