A woman in her 30s has died from COVID-19 while on a flight from Arizona to Texas after she had difficulty breathing while the aircraft was on the tarmac waiting to depart.
Officials announced this week the unidentified Garland woman began to have difficulty breathing while on the tarmac awaiting takeoff on July 25, but it was only announced today she died of coronavirus, news station WFAA reported.
The woman, who had underlying health issues, was administered oxygen but ultimately died on the runway.
It’s unclear what airport she was taking off from or what airline she was flying back to Texas.
Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said Sunday local officials were previously notified about her death, but only learned that she died from the virus a few days ago.
“We don’t know a whole lot,” Jenkins said at a press conference on COVID-19. “We may not know if she was aware she was sick.”
Jenkins noted that the woman contracted the virus while in Arizona and said her case was a “reminder that there is no age restriction in COVID.”
The woman, who is not thought to have contracted the virus on board, is likely to have passed on the virus to fellow passengers.
Earlier this month, the International Air Transport Association revealed just how likely passengers are to contract COVID on a plane.
The presentation, which included independent findings from Airbus, Boeing and Embraer, all used a complex computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to model the risks to passengers.
As part of the findings, each aircraft manufacturer’s outcome showed that passengers are more at risk from a lightning strike than from COVID transmission on a plane
This article originally appeared on the New York Post and has been republished with permission
