key: cord-258533-gds7sdc9
authors: Lytras, Theodore; Dellis, George; Flountzi, Anastasia; Hatzianastasiou, Sophia; Nikolopoulou, Georgia; Tsekou, Katerina; Diamantis, Zafiris; Stathopoulou, Grigoria; Togka, Marianthi; Gerolymatos, Gerasimos; Rigakos, George; Sapounas, Spiridon; Tsiodras, Sotirios
title: High prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in repatriation flights to Greece from three European countries
date: 2020-04-16
journal: J Travel Med
DOI: 10.1093/jtm/taaa054
sha: 
doc_id: 258533
cord_uid: gds7sdc9

Passengers on repatriation flights to Greece from the UK, Spain and Turkey were screened with oropharyngeal swabs on arrival for SARS-CoV-2 infection. Despite almost all passengers being asymptomatic, many tested positive (3.6% from UK, 6.3% from Spain and 6.3% from Turkey), indicating widespread transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in these countries.

Even more remarkably, the infection prevalence in these passengers was much higher than in the repatriation flights from Wuhan during the peak of the epidemic there, which was reported as <1%. 2 It is also within the range estimated in a recent modelling study (for the UK and Spain). 3 Furthermore, as of 6

April, another 4 test-positive and 36 test-negative passengers reported new symptoms during their self- Our results suggest that the ascertainment rate of SARS-CoV-2 infection might be much lower than previously assumed, with a correspondingly lower Infection Fatality Rate. 4 At the same time, the extent of asymptomatic transmission is likely to make mitigation challenging without wide-ranging social distancing measures. Better epidemiological data must be urgently collected, including repeated seroprevalence surveys, to guide further management of this pandemic. 

No funding was received for this study. 

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Estimating infection prevalence in Wuhan City from repatriation flights

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We gratefully acknowledge all GSCP personnel for facilitating the repatriation and screening process, as well as our colleagues in the reference laboratories who examined the swab samples. We also acknowledge Eleftheria Siare and Maria Schinochoritou for administrative support.

The authors have declared no conflicts of interest.