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Sheryl Prado got a special shout-out from flight attendants as the only person riding on a Washington to Boston flight.

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Seoul, South Korea (CNN) — The provincial government of Jeju Island, South Korea, is suing two women who visited the island on vacation despite the younger one having symptoms of coronavirus.The pair have been identified as a mother, age 52, and her 19-year-old daughter, who had recently returned to her native South Korea from studying abroad in Boston.The Seoul-based mother and daughter arrived on Jeju, which is a popular holiday destination for Koreans, on March 20 despite the fact that the daughter had been advised to self-quarantine upon her return to the country five days earlier, according to press release from the Jeju Provincial office.The daughter began showing symptoms of coronavirus on March 21, the release said, but she and her mother remained on the island for four more days, having contact with an estimated 47 people at 20 locations.Both mother and daughter tested positive for coronavirus at a public clinic after returning to their home in the Gangnam district of Seoul, according to the Gangnam-gu health office.Jeju Province has filed a civil suit against the pair at Jeju District Court seeking damages of 132 million won ($107,000 USD). In addition to the municipal government, plaintiffs include two Jeju residents who have had to quarantine since interacting with the women and two businesses on the island that were forced to close.”I hope to send a strong warning against actions that threaten the deadly struggle of the medical workers, the endeavor of the disease prevention workers, and the participation of our people in their fight against coronavirus,” Jeju Governor Won Hee-ryong said in a statement.In the submitted complaint, Jeju province wrote that the daughter “had failed to uphold her duty as a member of the community.”It also emphasized that the mother had “actively joined her daughter’s illegal activity, including providing funds for travel,” which is why she is also culpable. As of April 5, the Korea Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (KCDC) reported 94 new cases in South Korea, bringing the total number of cases to 10,156. There have been 177 deaths since the outbreak, and 6,325 people have recovered.

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(CNN) — Players of one of Australia’s most popular professional sports could be quarantined on a luxury island under an audacious plan being considered to get them back on the field — and back on TV — during the coronavirus crisis.Like most sports, the National Rugby League (NRL) was forced to cancel its entire season due to the spread of the coronavirus, which made it impossible to keep players safe. The cancellation threw the sport into a financial tailspin, and on April 3 the NRL announced that it had reached an agreement with players to forgo five months of their annual salary if the competition is unable to resume.NRL CEO Todd Greenberg said he is “hellbent” on getting players back on the field, and the innovation committee — codenamed Project Apollo — was considering the island proposal, along with others.Hosting the players on a tropical getaway is the brainchild of Tangalooma Island Resort manager David James.The resort, on Moreton Island off the coast of Queensland, typically houses up to 1,500 guests who toboggan down sand dunes, ride catamarans and queue up each night to feed dolphins. The resort is on Moreton Island, in the state of Queensland.Tangalooma ResortUnder James’ proposal, hundreds of players from the 16 NRL teams would live on the island and be ferried back and forth for games in empty stadiums to be broadcast worldwide. “It’s rugby league’s version of ‘Love Island’ by the sound of it,” Greenberg joked on Australia’s ‘Wide World of Sports’ radio show on April 3. “We might be able to get additional TV rights with a reality TV show. We’re up for any proposal.”Earlier this week, Australian Rugby League Commission Chairman Peter V’landys said he hoped the season would resume on July 1, a date considered optimistic by some as the number of coronavirus cases is still rising in the country. As of Friday, April 3, there were more than 5,000 confirmed cases and 26 people had died. “There are literally thousands of people that earn a living on the back of rugby league and the quicker we can unlock it and put it back on the field, our fans will enjoy it but also the industry and the economy will need it as well,” Greenberg said.Hit hard by coronavirusJames said that his Tangalooma resort could be ready to take players in four to six weeks, assuming the number of national coronavirus cases has stabilized or slowed and that health authorities supported the plan.Right now, the resort is empty, save for 30 to 35 employees who are monitoring security and feeding the dolphins each night.The business has been hit by a sharp downturn in global tourism, with 300 staffers being furloughed in recent weeks.”It’s been devastating. We’re a family-owned business. A lot of our staff have been with us anywhere from 10 to 20 years,” James said.Hosting rugby league players could be a financial lifeline for the resort and many other local businesses. “We’d have 560 hungry, big males to feed at the resort so that really protects some of the suppliers that we use already,” James said. “We’ve had probably 15 companies from different fields and industries contacting us already that would all benefit out of this going ahead.”Feeding dolphins is a popular activity for guests at the resort.Greg Sullavan/Tangalooma ResortHotel staff would be subject to the same quarantine measures as the players, and buses, boats and stadium change rooms would be sterilized before and after to ensure their safety.All training would be done on the island — on the beach and in the water. The island’s runway could be converted into a temporary field. “We have a 900 meter (2,950 feet) by 60 meter (195 feet) grass airstrip — the average length of a football rugby league pitch is about 120-odd meters (390 feet) so you probably have five pitches back to back,” James said.All visitors would be subject to temperature checks and tests for Covid-19.”No one can get into the resort, it’s a lockdown facility — it’s our boats in, our boats out,” James said. “If we could do this, it would be one of the greatest advertisements of Queensland and Australian ingenuity.”

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(CNN) — The US has stopped issuing passports, unless in a “life-or-death emergency,” in an effort to help stop the spread of coronavirus.Examples of emergencies include travel due to serious illnesses, injuries or deaths in the immediate family, it said. Applicants must require travel outside the US within three days, and will have to submit “proof of the life-or-death emergency such as a death certificate, a statement from a mortuary or a signed letter from a hospital or medical professional.”Applications received on or before March 19 will get processed, the agency said. The virus has ravaged the world, infecting more than 1 million people and killing over 53,000, according to Johns Hopkins University.The US is the hardest-hit country, and has more than 245,500 cases and at least 6,000 deaths. Top infectious diseases expert Dr. Anthony Fauci has said the whole country should be under a stay-at-home order.Thus far, 40 states have issued stay-at-home orders urging Americans not to leave the house.

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(CNN) — Aviation is fighting for survival. Cruise ships are grounded. As the pandemic grows, the travel industry faces an uncertain future and is scrambling to adapt. Those aircraft still flying are now subject to stricter than ever hygiene protocols, but when the threat of the virus eventually lifts, the transportation industry will face heightened concerns about infection.In the immediate wake of the global outbreak, airlines adopted stringent measures ranging from the mundane, like suspending hot towel service, to the extreme, like fogging an entire aircraft with disinfectant. As more data becomes available about how the virus spreads, these may widen further. Some aspects of aircraft cabin design may even be reconsidered. So what can passengers expect in the future to give them peace of mind about the spread of disease?While it’s clear that planes have accelerated the spread of the virus by transporting infected passengers across continents, the risks of transmission within the cabin are less known. Moving aroundThe risk of infection on board airplanes isn’t fully understood. Ezra Acayan/Getty ImagesSitting within two rows of an infected person on a flight is defined as a primary risk factor under World Health Organization guidelines, but passengers moving about during a flight could increase the potential for transmission. On one particularly ill-fated flight during the 2003 SARS outbreak, a passenger infected 22 out of 120 people on board, suggesting some outside the two-row zone are also in danger. “We were a little surprised by this, because we had 10 flights and eight took place during what’s called the flu season,” said Vicki Stover Hertzberg, a biostatistician at Atlanta’s Emory University, who led the study.”What we did find was that the bacteria on a plane look much like what you would find in your home, in your office or in places that people normally frequent. She said cases where someone becomes ill due to contact with someone on an airplane are few and far between. “Most of the infections that are due to air travel are because someone infected has been transported from point A to point B,” she said.However, Hertzberg says that the new hygiene measures the airlines have put in place are necessary and applauds them. “I hope that this will give people pause,” she says about the outbreak. “Several years ago there were proposals for things like touchless lavatory entry and touchless lavatories in general. But the airlines would have to build that in as they’re purchasing these planes.”Filtered airAirlines have introduced rigorous cleaning procedures.David Paul Morris/Getty ImagesModern planes are equipped with special filters, called HEPA, whose efficiency is similar to those used in operating rooms in hospitals. The air inside the cabin is an even mixture of recirculated and fresh air from outside.”Although passenger density is very high, air from the ventilation system is very clean, because HEPA filters can block particles with a diameter of 0.3 micron or larger, with an efficiency of 99% or higher,” says Qingyan Chen, a professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University in Indiana who has researched the spread of air particles in passenger vehicles and how to track them.However, Chen argues, that doesn’t mean that all the air inside the cabin is clean, because a person sneezing, coughing, talking or breathing emits droplets that could be transmitted to nearby passengers before the HEPA filter has a chance to catch them.That’s why he proposed a new type of ventilation system that creates an envelope of filtered air around each passenger, without mixing it with the air breathed out by neighbors. Chen’s design uses a dedicated HEPA filter for each seat, positioned in the footwell where current media boxes already reside. The clean air coming out of this box is cooler than cabin air but gets warmed up slightly by the body of each passenger, making it rise to mouth level. The exhaled air, even warmer and potentially contaminated, rises further to the ceiling, where it is captured by vents and largely expelled.”This type of design is the opposite of current ones, which supply air from the top and mix it as much as possible in a centralized system,” said Chen, who tested the system in a seven-row section of a Boeing 737, with encouraging results. However, given the level of confidence airlines have in their current filtration systems, it might be difficult to convince them in the absence of more evidence.Boarding proceduresThe Diamond Princess cruise ship became a Covid-19 hotspot after passengers were quarantined on board.PHILIP FONG/AFP via Getty ImagesThe overall risk of contracting an infectious disease on a plane, according to the International Air Transportation Association, is lower than in other confined spaces. “So far (…) we have only a very small number of instances in which a passenger may have transmitted (Covid-19) to a crew member, and none of a passenger transmitting to another passenger,” says IATA’s medical adviser Andrew Powell. “This could be due to a range of factors including high cabin airflow rates, relative lack of contact between passengers, lack of face-to-face conversations, and widespread awareness of avoiding flying while unwell.”There are far more cases, he says, of crew members becoming infected at home, or in layover destinations.Other parts of a flight might also be more dangerous than the time spent on the plane itself, such as the boarding process, which often tightly packs people together.It found that boarding passengers randomly — rather than by rows or groups — lowered the risk of contagion, because people were less likely to spend extended periods of time close to one another. The only cost? A longer wait.”This is an interesting area which some airlines are already beginning to try to adopt,” said Powell. “While the aircraft is a very controlled environment, the boarding process is much less so. If flying is to occur when Covid-19 is still circulating, it may be important to achieve methods of ensuring physical distancing of 1.5 meters during this process, which would mean starting boarding with those farthest from the entry door, in a controlled and sequenced manner.” Ships are ‘incubators’Nearly 20% of those on board the Diamond Princess became ill. Kazuhiro NOGI / AFPCruise ships were hit the hardest by the coronavirus, with over a dozen outbreaks that led to all major lines halting operations. The largest cluster of infections was aboard the Diamond Princess, where nearly 20% of those on board fell ill.”Cruise ships in principle look like a building, so their air conditioning systems are similar to those in buildings,” says Qingyan Chen. “There’s nothing wrong with that in normal circumstances, but with a viral outbreak that’s a problem, because the filters they use don’t block viruses.” That means that the ventilation systems may have spread the virus from one cabin to the next, by recirculating contaminated air that contained tiny droplets expelled by sneezing or coughing passengers. Chen believes some of the infections aboard the Diamond Princess may have happened this way, as they occurred after passengers were quarantined, when direct contact between people was reduced. “The quickest solution is to convert all filters to HEPA filters, and I believe that could be done easily,” he says.The Diamond Princess outbreak has become a case study that could inform our knowledge of how the virus spreads. Out of 3,711 passengers and crew on board, more than 700 became infected during a 14-day quarantine imposed on the ship by Japanese authorities in the port of Yokohama. Outbreak scenarioIf everyone on board had been evacuated immediately upon discovering the outbreak, only 76 people would have become ill, the study has found. However, if the quarantine had not been instituted at all and everyone had been left to carry on as normal, almost 3,000 people would have caught the virus.”The quarantine did work, this is important to say,” says Annelies Wilder-Smith, who led the study. “But, in hindsight, it would have been better to evacuate immediately. Obviously, this was all happening when we were still learning about Covid-19. “We cannot blame anyone and I don’t think mistakes were made. But we have learned for the future that if you do have an outbreak on a cruise ship or any other confined setting, you have to take people out of that setting.”Cruise ships are unique because they are a confined space in which the same people constantly mix, which is worse in an outbreak scenario than even a metropolis, where density is also high but there is less mixing.”Unlike airplanes, cruise ships are massive incubators of disease. A single case can trigger an outbreak,” said Wilder-Smith.”The question is, how do you reinstall the trust and the economy of cruise ships without containing the virus entirely? The industry may have a problem for the next year.”

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(CNN) — Chefs Adam Bordonaro and Ryan Lory opened their first restaurant in 2019. Ardyn, an intimate, romantic spot in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City, received immediate attention, with rave reviews from the media and diners and a packed dining room and bar, to boot. The two men have been close friends for seven years, meeting at Charlie Palmer’s Steak, where they both worked and staying in touch as the two walked parallel paths. Almost exactly one year after opening, all restaurants in New York City were shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic, and Ardyn’s brief, shining run came to an abrupt halt. “The blood, sweat and tears were paying off. We were finally at a place where we’re going to make it here,” says Lory.Chef-partners Adam Bordonaro (left) and Ryan Lowry at their now-shuttred restaurant, Ardyn, in New York CityArdynDoomsday preppersAs ready as anyone could have been for the lockdown, Bordonaro and Lory were. “We saw it coming — Seattle had been hit hard four weeks before. This is not an ‘if’ question, but a ‘when’ question,” explains Lory.Their survivalist brainchild is a hybrid of a fine-dining tasting menu, a meal kit and gallows humor with a side of silliness: The Doomsday Dinner Party, which starts at $600 for four.Prepped dishes ready to be packaged and deliveredArdyn”We wanted to do something that would allow someone at home to replicate the restaurant’s quality and spirit in their home,” says Lory.The meal kits include seven courses — the current menu will be changed next week — with citrus-cured Hamachi, charred broccoli and 45-day dry-aged Wagyu ribeye from Snake River Farms. The meals come ready to assemble, heat and plate, so nothing gets gross en route. There are detailed instructions, YouTube videos, a music playlist and an upsell to add bottled cocktails and wine pairings.The final piece of frivolity — the meals are delivered by two tuxedo-clad people wearing bunny masks. Because why not? The duo wanted to create something memorable and special, exclusive and strange to help break up the monotony of every day.One of the Doomsday Dinner Party delivery bunniesArdynSo far it’s been a very successful gambit. So much so that Ardyn is launching their Doomsday Dinner Party experience in the Hamptons this month.Giving back Keeping themselves afloat during this unprecedented downturn for the restaurant industry was not the only thing on their minds. “Everybody is getting whacked right now,” says Lory.In partnership with the March On Foundation, the Ardyn team has created a nonprofit called the COCO Fund (Covid Community Fund) a nonprofit that will be funded by donations and 15% of the proceeds from the Doomsday Dinner Party series. The fund aims to assist those in the restaurant, event and hospitality industries, whose workers are among the hardest hit by the pandemic.Bordonaro and Lory are taking this situation very seriously, and neither is sure yet what the future holds.”We could not have envisioned a more ominous and terrible situation for the industry to be in,” says Lory. “We don’t want people to think ‘this is the end of the world,’ but this is doomsday for restaurants. This is going to be an everlasting change to the restaurant industry. No doubt.”

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