According to the IATA website, during his speech at CAPA Aeropolitical and Regulatory Summit 2020 held on February 5, 2020, Alexandre de Juniac, Director General and CEO of IATA, said that “aviation is an industry that rises to challenges” and that the world and the civil aviation industry have a lot of experience to contain the novel coronavirus.

Juniac stated that “we have a global framework to help contain outbreaks. These are the International Health Regulations (IHR)—built under the leadership of the World Health Organization (WHO)… and we work closely with the WHO with the objective of being able to operationalize what public health authorities need us to do.” He said that “some countries—China among them—are taking extraordinary measures to contain the virus,” and that “we have also defined industry standards to keep our passengers and crew safe and healthy. This includes guidance for crew, front line, cleaning and maintenance staff, among others…The effectiveness of these standards is assisted by several factors: supplied air on modern aircraft is as safe as that of an operating theatre thanks to advanced filtering systems; communicating good hygiene practices to passengers helps… and there are various screening measures—thermal and manual—at strategic airports to keep potentially infected passengers off airplanes.”

Juniac stated that “the WHO’s recent declaration that we are in a Public Health Emergency of International Concern… did not mean the people’s individual safety had taken a turn for the worse. Rather it indicated that the scale of the situation requires governments to cooperate to contain and hopefully eliminate the virus,” and that “in 2003 SARS infected 8,000 and claimed the lives of some 800; the estimates for the Swine Flu—H1N1—outbreak of 2009 are between 150,000 and 575,000 fatalities; and the World Health Organization calculates annual deaths from seasonal flu between 290,000 and 650,000.”

Juniac further pointed out that “as of 2 February, the Civil Aviation Administration of China, or CAAC, has reported that over 4,000 relief flights performed by commercial airlines in China delivered over 600,000 pieces of virus prevention materials to affected areas. Chinese airlines have also helped bring some 7,500 medical staff to where they are needed. And airlines are helping with the evacuation of foreign nationals from the affected areas, the delivery of samples to labs, the transport of experts to areas in distress and much more.”

In conclusion, Juniac stressed that “the freedom that aviation provides is critical to the world in which we live. With the help of good regulation, we constantly improve safety, efficiency and sustainability. We have a critical role to play in containing and eventually solving this current crisis…The next months will certainly be challenging for the air transport industry and for governments. Together we will get through the virus outbreak. And together we will continue to build the global standards and regulations that will enable this industry—the business of freedom—well into the future.”