A joint study by American Airlines and British Airways that looked at using pre-departure COVID-19 testing to lift quarantine rules has concluded that a single test before departure has the potential to catch 99.6 per cent of positive cases if taken within 72-hours of the scheduled flight departure.
The study looked at 600 real-life passengers on flights between several cities in the United States and London Heathrow Airport who all volunteered to take three separate COVID-19 tests. The study was funded by the airline industry and analysed by researchers from Oxford University.
The volunteers took a gold-standard Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test 72-hours before departure, followed by a quick turnaround LAMP test immediately on arrival, and then a third PCR test five days after arrival.
“Just 1% of travellers who took a test within 72 hours of their departure tested positive and, as a result of the test, they did not travel,” the airlines said in a joint statement on Thursday. “None of the travellers who took a test upon arrival at LHR tested positive. Of the travellers who took the third test after arriving in the UK, just 0.4%, of travellers tested positive.”
The trial was started before pre-departure testing requirements were imposed by the British government and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The British government has since introduced post-arrival test rules for the vast majority of passengers coming in from abroad.
Neither the British government nor the CDC has released data on positivity rates for either pre-departure or post-arrival tests.
Nonetheless, American Airlines and British Airways will share their own study data with governments on either side of the Atlantic in an attempt to get travel restrictions lifted.
The airlines were buoyed by the fact that nearly 100 per cent of travellers said they would be happy to take a pre-departure test if it meant they…