Covid-infected man dies on plane

Agencies | Orlando

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Ignoring the risks of contracting the deadly coronavirus disease, a paramedic and some other passengers performed CPR on a man who had stopped breathing on board a United Airlines flight.

"I made the decision to attempt to save the passengers life and along with 2 others performed CPR for close to an hour until we landed,” Tony Aldapa, a paramedic, was quoted as saying in a report in Mirror.

The plane made an emergency landing in New Orleans where firefighters came on board and removed the man from the plane. He was pronounced dead in hospital.

The man's wife told paramedics that he had been showing Covid-19 symptoms for the past week. The man was noticed as shaking and sweating and having trouble breathing as the flight took off, and his condition deteriorated later. He had allegedly lied when he was checking in and had told ground staff that he didn't have any Covid-19 symptoms.

“I knew the risks involved in performing CPR on someone that potentially has Covid but I made the choice to do so anyway. I spoke with the passenger's wife about his medical history and she never mentioned he was positive, she said he was scheduled to have a test done in LA. I spent the remainder of the flight covered in my own sweat and in that man's urine. I have since become symptomatic myself and am awaiting the results of my second test,” said Tony in the report.

United initially told the passenger that the man had died of heart problems. "At the time of the diversion, we were informed he had suffered a cardiac arrest, so passengers were given the option to take a later flight or continue on with their travel plans,” a passenger said.

Health officials are now trying to contact other passengers while flight attendants have been ordered to self-isolate for two weeks.