Is Airport COVID-19 Testing Ready for Takeoff?

This transcript was generated using AI and may contain inaccuracies. If you notice an error, feel free to email [email protected].

CHAPTERS 

[00:00:00]: Airports’ COVID challenges and Vienna background 

[00:05:29]: Has testing boosted travel demand? 

[00:06:18]: How the testing process works 

[00:11:35]: Can testing scale with more passengers? 

[00:13:41]: Non-testing safety measures at Vienna Airport 

[00:16:15]: Technology innovations and experiments 

[00:20:20]: EU coordination and frustrations 

[00:22:27]: Post-pandemic future of air travel 

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00.640] 

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to Moving Beyond Pandemic, a podcast from the Migration Policy Institute about travel, migration and mobility. During COVID-19, we're looking at how the pandemic is reshaping all aspects of the movement of people, from the new architecture of borders being built around health screening to how smugglers and traffickers are adapting routes and strategies in response to border closures. I'm Meghan Benton. I'm Director of International Research at MPI and at our sister organization, MPI Europe. In this episode, I was excited to speak to Peter Kleemann, the Communications Director for Vienna Airport in Austria, about their COVID testing program and whether it could offer the key to opening up international travel. Vienna was one of the first airports in the West, at least, to offer COVID testing on arrival. This is a model that's increasingly being copied by other airports. And there's now a growing crescendo of voices calling for more international cooperation and standards on screening and testing at ports of entry. And recent weeks have seen advances in rapid testing that might make testing possible on a larger scale. But airports are also microcosms of the huge challenges facing societies as they try to restart economic activity while keeping people safe.

[00:01:18.570] 

They have thousands, hundreds of thousands of people brought together from locations with very different COVID pictures and then funneled through what are often very congested choke points. So they face this huge responsibility of keeping passengers and frontline staff safe, as well as essentially being the gatekeeper for new arrivals into the country and a life raft for ailing economies because they're the main avenue for bringing in tourists and business travelers. So I was thrilled to speak to Peter about how Vienna Airport is balancing these huge responsibilities. Well, hi, Peter. Thank you so much for joining us today. I'm so thrilled to speak to you because I should let you know that I actually grew up in Vienna, and Vienna Airport was the first one I ever went to. And I also visited so many times as an adult, as a business traveler. So I was so interested back in may when Vienna Airport was one of the first to start offering COVID tests and was so interesting to be moving away from landing bans and travel restrictions and begin to have a discussion about, well, how do we get people moving and how do we have more precise tools for this COVID age?

[00:02:31.160] 

So I was wondering if you could start by talking a little bit about how that came about. So how did you get this testing off the ground, and why was Vienna further ahead than other airports, which are now sort of copying its example?

[00:02:45.960] 

Well, when the COVID virus spread all over Europe. I would say during the month of February and especially in the northern part of Italy, which is very close to Austria. It was clear that this will have some impacts in the Austrian travel situation as well. And by the end of February, we already recognized a very strong decrease in passenger figures here at Vienna airport. And due to the regulations of the Austrian government in March, it turned out that the passenger figures at Vienna airport were really decreasing very fast. And I would say in the very first weeks, in the very first, first month in, during the COVID-19 pandemic in Austria, we almost had no passenger traffic at all. We had a minus of more than 90%. In the peak days and peak weeks, we had a decrease of more than 99% compared to the last year. So the impact of Vienna airport and the impact of the passenger traffic at Vienna airport was quite high. And at the same time, we realized, and we recognized a strong demand, especially of business travelers, that they still need to visit their markets to meet their business partners abroad, but they couldn't find any traveling opportunity.

[00:04:15.410] 

And we got several inquiries from big Austrian companies to ask if we could find some solution how to make flight traveling possible in these Corona times. And we realized that one of the most successful strategy would be to test the passengers and to provide a very easy and very fast testing service according to the Austrian regulations and within the Austrian regulations. So we were looking for an external health partner who could provide that kind of testing service. And so we started COVID-19 PCR testing service here at the airport, starting with very low passenger numbers. And in the meantime, that figure increased very much. So it started driven by business interest from Austrian companies that they need to visit their markets, that they need to go abroad to do their projects. And we were thinking about how to create the service which could provide the opportunity of flight traveling within the federal regulations.

[00:05:29.920] 

And do you think it's worked? I mean, have you already seen a big increase in business travel and tourism return or is it still early days there?

[00:05:39.520] 

Well, we see a very strong demand in that service. We have a lot of people using that service here on site. We started with 200 people per day, between 150 and 200 people per day. In the last days and last weeks, we had more than 600 people. I would say on the weekend, on Saturday, we had more than 800 people being tested here in our service. So the demand for that service is still increasing from the very first day. And especially when we started that service, we had a lot of business travelers who used that service for traveling and for coming back to Vienna.

[00:06:18.540] 

Interesting. And could you explain a little bit more about how it works? So who is required to take a test and where do people wait for results? Are they supposed to qualify quarantine in the airport or in their hotel? How does it work?

[00:06:30.520] 

Well, the Austrian regulation says that everybody who is traveling from a dedicated area from abroad, everybody who is traveling from that dedicated area to the country to Austria, needs to Show a negative COVID-19 test already at the arrival. And if the passenger cannot provide that kind of test result, he has or she has to start a 10 days quarantine which can be ended before. If they can get a COVID-19 test during that quarantine, and if the test is negative, this would end the quarantine period. And there are certain regions dedicated by the Austrian government and nominated as kind of possible areas where the COVID-19 pandemic could increase in a kind of a higher level. So there is, there are dedicated countries and areas like parts of Spain or parts in other countries. So everybody who is traveling from these countries to Vienna and then over Vienna Airport has to provide that PCR test. And if he or she is not able to provide the test, he has to do COVID-19 test during the quarantine. And the service at Vienna airport follows these regulations, of course. And in an operational way, it means that the passengers who arrive at the airport, once they arrive in the terminal building, they have to show up their negative PCR result.

[00:08:08.790] 

If they do not have that result, they have to confirm at the authority in the terminal that they will start a 10 days quarantine. And they have to provide the personal data, like the address, like their name, like the country where they were coming from. And when they are on their way to the home, on the way to the point of quarantine, they enter the health center at Vienna Airport, can do the PCR testing here on site. The whole testing procedure, including accreditation and all the administration procedure, I would say will take 15 minutes, half an hour. And once they being tested, they travel home to the location of the quarantine and they receive the result via email within three to six hours. And once the result is negative, this is ending the quarantine. So once they receive a negative result, they can leave their flat, they can leave their location of quarantine and are free to move again.

[00:09:10.880] 

And how reliable or watertight do you see that system? Because, you know, different countries taking slightly different approaches. The extreme would be Hong Kong, which is requiring people to take a test on arrival. But it's putting people in hotels while they wait for that test because, you know, it doesn't trust people necessarily to comply with the quarantine measures while it waits. And then on the other hand, you have another risk which is that people could have contracted COVID during the journey and that might not yet be showing up on results. So I'm just wondering if you have a sense of, you know, is this a completely fallible system or is it sort of as good as it can be?

[00:09:53.630] 

Well, from our point of view, the method of PCR testing is one of the most reliable testing method which is existing right now these days. And if people would not follow the quarantine regulations, they would fail on an official regulation from the federal authorities. So if somebody decides not to follow the regulations and if he's doing the test and then go home and then leave for shopping or for meeting some friends, this would be a problem if it would turn out that he would be positive because then he would of course be controlled if he would still follow the quarantine regulations. So by the end, it's a consequence for each individual if he is following the regulations or not. And it of course would get some consequences. There are some very high payment fees if somebody has to, if somebody is not following these regulations. But from our point of view, it's a very practical service because it would speed up process of testing and you can guarantee that you can identify possible infections very fast. People arrive at the airport and right now when the arrive, you do the test and you get within a few hours the information if somebody is infected by the with the virus or not.

[00:11:26.430] 

And so you have a very early information and very fast information if there is some infection potential or not.

[00:11:35.710] 

Interesting. I guess the question with all of this is how much can it scale? So you're currently still dealing with fairly low numbers, presumably, but could you return to the same levels of traffic in Vienna Airport and be providing, you know, universal COVID tests?

[00:11:53.660] 

Well, in these days we have around 25,000 passengers per day. But these tests are only necessary for that amount of people who is arriving from that risk, from the dedicated risk countries. So it's. We don't need to provide the service for 25,000 passengers per day. We only need to provide it for a few hundred who are arriving from dedicated countries. So for that amount of passengers, the service works and we could also increase to higher capacities. But of course, that service is. The dimension depends on the, on the, on future travel regulations and future travel procedures within Europe and between Europe and Intercontinental flight. So as long as you are dealing with dedicated countries and regulations for passengers coming from dedicated countries, that service works. If we would think about the future of air transportation and we would think about of 100,000 passengers per day or more. Of course, you also need to discuss how travel regulations should be developed and should be designed for provide efficient travel system in future for the situation. Right now it works and we could increase. We are talking about low passenger numbers. But you always need to have in mind that we are providing the service only for these people who really are obliged to do that kind of test.

[00:13:34.470] 

And we are not providing it for everybody who arrives at Vienna Airport because this is not. That's not necessary. In fact.

[00:13:41.320] 

And you mentioned of course that this is just one piece of a whole kind of picture of different responses to the COVID pandemic and that you need an adjustment to the regulations and to different procedures. Could you talk a little bit about what Vienna Airport is doing outside of testing to keep passengers and staff safe from wearing masks to new technologies? What does the airport look like these days?

[00:14:07.380] 

Well, we implemented several activities here at the airport. Everybody is obliged to wear a mask inside the terminal building. That's for employees, for passengers, for all people who visit the airport building. Also for people working in the shops or in the restaurants. We're also taking care that everybody is is keeping up a distance of more than one and a half meter from one person to another. And this is legally binding for all the people inside the terminal. We also providing more busses when it comes to operational things by hand. By the way, when it comes to the ground handling of lights, we provide more depending on the number of passengers on that aircraft. We provide more busses to divide the group of passengers between several transportation busses when they are being deboarded or also boarded between the aircraft and terminal building. We also are in very close contact with the airlines when it comes to social distancing in the terminal building. Also on the way to the aircraft in terms of boarding and deboarding procedures. And we also increased our cleaning intervals within the terminal building, especially at the touch points where people are using doors or some sanitary infrastructure to taking care that nobody is to reduce the possibility of infections right at these touch points.

[00:16:03.460] 

But the main, I would say the most interesting and the most efficient activity these days is a testing strategy.

[00:16:15.220] 

I mean, we're seeing right now many airports that are investing in new technologies that can provide a safer travel experience. I mean, there were already a lot of technologies in development like the contactless check in and automated passport control that you know, have less contact and theoretically could be safer. But we're also seeing things like these ultraviolet-C robots that are doing special cleaning and various different things going on. Is Vienna already doing a lot of experimentation and innovation in these areas?

[00:16:51.980] 

Well, we installed several heating cameras. Don't know how to say in English, I need to.

[00:17:00.620] 

I think we call them thermal scanners, but.

[00:17:02.540] 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the word. Yeah, that's the word. I'm sorry for that. Yeah, yeah. We implemented thermal scanners for arriving passengers. So everybody who arrives at Vienna airport is being scanned. And we of course also think about the activities when it comes to departure procedures. But our main issue would be that we would need clear and common regulations according to all countries, at least within the European Union. And to create common regulations, common administration procedures to avoid that each country has different regulations and has different procedures in the terminal operation. As an example, when it comes to security control, this is successfully implemented since a very long time. And, and at least in the within the European Union you have clear and common security proceedings all over all European airports. And, and we also believe that that kind of principle to create common regulations in terms of COVID prevention, in terms of information, travel information from passengers, we believe that this could bring up a huge growing impact for the whole aviation branch. As today we have different travel regulations in different countries and we also have different administration procedures. In one country you provide some paper, people have to fill out some paperwork.

[00:18:47.080] 

In other countries you can do this on internet applications. When you travel to specific countries you need to register in advance with your personal data on some online applications. So there are different ways on how to, to get the travel data from the passengers, how to get the information where the passengers are coming from and where they had been in the last weeks and for how long they had been. So we would say there is a lot of information existing already, but it needs to be registered on a digital base. And once you have all that information on digital base you can easily research all the travel history of somebody and if it turns out that somebody is positive, being positive tested you, you can easily identify the travel history and also some possible contact persons. So we would really recommend that on at least an European wide level it would, it should be possible to create some electronical accreditation, some electronical data management for passengers. And we would need some, some common regulations which would fit for all countries that passengers are treated in the same way and, and not in different ways in the different regulations.

[00:20:20.410] 

That's really interesting. I mean, does that mean you've seen. Have you felt frustrated somewhat by the lack of EU response on this? I mean, even just agreeing the countries to put on the safe third country list was, was so difficult, you know, do you, do you see really that there being a case for more coordination?

[00:20:37.910] 

Well, we believe that the COVID-19 situation will stay for at least a little more time, as we may, as people may expect in the beginning. So we think that we need to find proceedings and procedures how to live with the COVID-19 virus and how to find procedures for business reality, for travel reality, to help the economy, to help social life and to help our travel industry growing, growing up again. And from our point of view, there would at least be some potential to implement that kind of activities. Because when you look to other issues like security control or aviation procedures which are valid for all European airports in the same way, all these things had been successfully implemented in the last years. And we believe that we should focus our energy on that kind of European ride regulation. So we see some potential and some chances here. And Vienna Airport is already part of a European organization who is thinking about that kind of technical services. So we see that the European Union is of course thinking about these procedures. We believe that this should be at least a way how to handle air travel and air transportation in future.

[00:22:18.780] 

And yeah, this should have a kind of priority when it comes to fight against the COVID-19 pandemic in travel business.

[00:22:27.080] 

That's really helpful. And just one final, slightly provocative question. What do you think the future holds beyond the pandemic? Even when we have a widely accessible vaccine? Do you think we'll return to pre COVID-19 levels of travel and movement?

[00:22:43.240] 

Well, I believe that aviation and traveling in a way as we knew it before, I think the aviation business will come back stronger as before. We saw it in other crises like after 9/11 or Ebola or SARS, that aviation business had some decrease for sometimes shorter, sometimes longer period of time. But the main need for people to travel and the main need for the basic need for people and demand for people to travel on an intercontinental basis will continue. And aviation is one of the, or is, I would say, the most secure transportation system in the world and is the only transportation system in the world which can provide that kind of intercontinent traffic in an efficient way and in a very high scalable way. So we believe that aviation business will come back stronger. It's only a question when will that situation happen again? We all learned in that actual situation that tools like video conferencing at home, office and some other tools could of course help for doing your operational business. But all that kind of communication tools and collaboration tools are also limited. So if you're a big company and you have to create some really big infrastructure projects in other parts of the world, you need to be able to travel there and you need to be able to meet your people there and to implement that kind of project.

[00:24:41.450] 

So this cannot be done on a video conferencing on a long term base. So we believe that of course that situation will have some impacts on the aviation business in terms of security, in terms of pandemic prevention and then health prevention, but it won't change the basic demand on traveling and on air transportation. So we believe that aviation business will come back. And it may take some time until we see the figures of the last years, but it will for sure come back.

[00:25:19.800] 

Well, thank you so much, Peter. I for one can't wait to be able to attend a conference in Vienna and have some topfenstrudel. So hope to see you.

[00:25:28.440] 

Yeah, we'll be looking forward.

[00:25:31.240] 

Thank you so much. Bye bye. I learned so much from my chat with Peter. But most of all I began to see a vision of what managed mobility might look like in an era of COVID. Of course he's completely right. We need more international cooperation on this issue. We need common procedures, we need more investment in testing, which has kind of been the poor relation compared to the vaccine race, for instance. I also came away with a lot of unanswered questions. For instance, how do you scale up testing without creating congestion and chaos? That sworn enemies of social distancing? Is a single test reliable enough if people could have contracted COVID during the journey and not yet be reading positive? How does testing fit with a broader strategy then of health proofing that includes screening and new technologies and data, informed risk assessments, quarantine and hopefully at some point vaccine records. And then what happens to people who test positive? We'll be returning to these issues through different perspectives in the coming weeks. And if you'd like to join us, you can subscribe to this podcast, Moving Beyond Pandemic, wherever you find your podcasts or just access it through our website, migrationpolicy.org/podcasts I'd like to thank my colleagues Lisa Dixon, Michelle Mittelstadt and Sara Staedicke for producing this podcast.

[00:26:57.420] 

The music you heard on today's episode was Juno in the Space Maze by Loopop. I'm Meghan Benton. I'll see you next time.