More than half of China’s imported COVID-19 cases on Sunday were passengers who travelled together on the same Aeroflot flight according to health authorities in Shanghai. Until a few weeks ago, Russia had denied it had a major Coronavirus outbreak but has recently introduced lockdown measures in several cities including Moscow.
Officially, Russia has detected nearly 16,000 cases of the potentially deadly respiratory illness which first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019. So far, there have only been 130 deaths linked to the novel Coronavirus but the prevalence of the illness in so many passengers on the same flight has raised questions about Russia’s official figures.
All of the passengers who tested positive for COVID-19 on the Aeroflot flight were Chinese citizens and had arrived in Shanghai on Friday. In an attempt to prevent a second wave of Coronavirus cases, Chinese officials test all new arrivals and passengers must then spend 14-days in mandatory quarantine.
By Sunday, tests results for 51 passengers had come back as positive – more than half of China’s total new COVID-19 infections and the bulk of the imported cases the country registered. By Monday, a further nine tests had come back as positive, bringing the total number of infected passengers on the same flight to 60.
So far, nearly 100 people on the flight have been tracked and placed into quarantine.
