Impact of international travel dynamics on domestic spread of 2019-nCoV
in India: origin-based risk assessment in importation of infected
travelers
Abstract
The recent pandemic caused by the 2019 outbreak of novel coronavirus
(2019-nCoV) has affected more than 1.3 million people resulting
~75000 deaths across 212 countries/territories as on 7th
April 2020. The importation of the cases owing to enormous international
travels from the affected countries is the foremost reason for local
cycle of transmission. For a country like India, the second most
populous country in the world with ~135 billion
population, the management and control of 2019-nCoV domestic spread
heavily relied on effective screening and strict quarantine of
passengers arriving at various international airports in India from
affected countries. Here, by extracting the data from FLIRT, an online
airline database for more than 800 airlines, and scanning more than
180000 flights and 39.9 million corresponding passenger seats during 4th
– 25th March, we show that India experienced the highest risk index of
importing the passengers from middle eastern airports. Contrary to
perception, travelers from China imposed lowest risk of importing the
infected cases in India. This is clearly evident form the fact that
while the number of infected cases were on the peak in China India was
one of the least affected countries. The number of cases in India
started exhibiting a sharp increase in the infected cases only after the
European countries and USA recorded large number of infected cases. We
further argue that while the number of cases in middle eastern countries
may still be very low, the airports in middle eastern countries,
particularly Dubai, being one of the largest transit hubs for
international passengers, including arriving in India, might have posed
a higher risk of getting infected with 2019-nCoV. We suggest that any
future travel related disease infection screening at the airports should
critically assess the passengers from major transit hubs in addition to
affected country of origin.