Closed-circuit television shows one of the people infected on the flight and two people infected in the hotel were never in direct contact

The coronavirus spread on an international flight, in a hotel corridor and then to household contacts despite efforts to isolate and quarantine patients, New Zealand researchers reported Thursday.
Careful genomic tracing confirmed the spread of the virus among nine patients and shows how people can infect one another despite careful efforts, the researchers reported in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.
One of those infected had spent 14 days in quarantine after being evacuated on a chartered 747 jet from India to New Zealand last September and had tested negative twice.
Others appear to have become infected on the flight, even though it was only a third full and passengers were spaced apart from one another. All passengers were required to wear face masks for the duration of the flight.
The evacuees were quarantined in a hotel, in rooms with balconies and private bathrooms. But at least two more got infected in the hotel, the researchers reported.
Closed-circuit television shows one of the people infected on the flight and two people infected in the hotel were never in direct contact and were not even outside their rooms at the same time, the researchers said.
"Nevertheless, footage showed that during routine testing on day 12, which took place within the doorway of the hotel rooms, there was a 50-second window between closing the door to the room of case-patient C and opening the door to the room of case-patients D and E. Therefore, we hypothesized that suspended aerosol particles were the probable mode of transmission in this instance, and that the enclosed and unventilated space in the hotel corridor probably facilitated this event," they wrote.
After 14 days of quarantine in the New Zealand city of Christchurch, and repeated negative tests, some of the travelers were flown on a chartered flight to Auckland, where they were met by household contacts. Two of those contacts became infected.
The team tested samples from everyone infected. "We found a genomic link between virus isolated from all 9 case-patients," they wrote.
"These findings reinforce the need for rigorous border control processes for countries pursuing COVID-19 elimination," they wrote. Plus, careful testing and contact tracing is important for keeping track of the virus, they said.
A woman in Florida has given birth to what is believed to be the first child born with COVID-19 antibodies after receiving a vaccine while pregnant.
The woman, who is a frontline healthcare worker, was called up to receive the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine at 36 weeks of pregnancy and gave birth 3 weeks later to a healthy baby girl, the Guardian reports. Antibodies were found from the time of delivery after analyzing blood from the umbilical cord.
"To our knowledge, this was the first in the world that was reported of a baby being born with antibodies after a vaccination," said pediatrician Paul Gilbert in a statement to WPBF.
The findings have been reported by Gilbert and Chad Rudnick in a new preprint study (meaning it has not yet been peer-reviewed).
The paper explains that the safety and efficacy of flu vaccinations for pregnant people have been well studied in terms of protection for the newborn by placental transfer of antibodies. However not much is know about COVID-19 vaccinations and the transfer of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies during pregnancy, but a similar sort of protection should be expected, Gilbert and Rudnick say.
"We tested … the baby's blood, to see if the antibodies in the mother passed to the baby which is something we see happen with other vaccines given during pregnancy," Gilbert told WPBF.
After testing blood from the umbilical cord of the baby at the time of birth, the doctors found SARS-CoV-2 antibodies present, noting in the preprint: "Thus, there is potential for protection and infection risk reduction from SARS-CoV-2 with maternal vaccination."
Interestingly, an earlier study had found COVID-19 antibodies present in breast milk from mothers that recovered from the infection, speculating it might be possible to transfer antibodies to a newborn via this mechanism.
Nevertheless, the study authors stress that it is currently unknown how well the antibodies would protect the newborn or when during pregnancy would be best to vaccinate to confer the best immunological transfer to the unborn.
"This is one small case in what will be thousands and thousands of babies born to mothers who have been vaccinated over the next several months," Rudnick said.
More investigations will need to be carried out to see whether antibodies are actually prevalent in most babies born to mothers and pregant people who have received a COVID-19 vaccine, as well as to look at whether there might be any differences depending on which vaccine is received.
To conclude, the authors "urge other investigators to create pregnancy and breastfeeding registries as well as conduct efficacy and safety studies of the COVID-19 vaccines in pregnant and breastfeeding woman and their offspring."
For more information about COVID-19, check out the IFLScience COVID-19 hub where you can follow the current state of the pandemic, the progress of vaccine development, and further insights into the disease.

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