Viral madness: passenger makes self-protective COVID cocoon on long-haul flight
Fellow passengers barely batted an eyelid when a man made an improvised social isolation tent to protect himself and his companions from possible viral infection on a flight from Los Angeles to Guangzhou, China, according to reports from Taiwan news outlets.
The reports came after a Chinese citizen uploaded a picture of the incident on social media site Weibo. The picture was said to be taken on Monday, January 10.
In the picture it can be seen that the passenger sitting in the second row of the economy class cabin used packing tape to affix a sheet of white plastic film to the back and sides of seats in the front row, and seats in his own row, to make a protective COVID-proof cocoon.
While the man’s epidemic prevention strategy stood out from that of other passengers, it aroused little attention. “Now that the Omicron variant is rapidly spreading, it is quite understandable that some people would go to such extreme measures,” the person posting to social media said.
“There is nothing absurd in a pandemic,” North American Chinese language newspaper World Journal reported, noting that the incident occurred on China Southern Airlines flight CZ328. Another report in the same newspaper claimed that such measures were not a purely Chinese phenomena, and that “foreigners are forerunners” in extreme inflight personal protection methods.
However, travelers on flight CZ328 will soon no longer need to worry about infection while aboard the airplane, as the flights between LA and Guangzhou will be cancelled from January 31, according to Reuters, today, January 12.
The route is one of a further six to be cancelled, bringing a total of 70 cancelled routes between the US and China in an attempt to protect the communist kingdom from cross infection from the western variant of the original Wuhan strain.
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