Global trends in air travel: implications for connectivity and resilience to infectious disease threats

Ashleigh R Tuite; Deepit Bhatia; Rahim Moineddin; Isaac Bogoch; Alexander G Watts; Kamran Khan

The world's connectivity via air travel has increased dramatically over the past decade, potentially increasing the vulnerability of billions of people across the world to existing and novel pathogens without a corresponding increase in coping capacity. 5, 16, 17 Using the Fragile States Index and airline passenger data, we show that although the number of passengers traveling internationally is increasing, this growth is not uniform across all FSI categories. In particular, although there has been an increase in travel from the most vulnerable Alert countries, the overall amount of travel from these countries is small, relative to overall passenger volumes. There has been notable growth in travel from Warning and Stable countries, which comprise more than threequarters of international air travel passengers, and which may have suboptimal capacity to detect and respond to infectious disease threats that emerge within their borders.