First mission for the Air Force’s flying hospital pods: Pulling COVID-19 patients from Afghanistan
The C-17 Globemaster III aircraft had three COVID-19 patients on board. (Staff Sgt. Devin Nothstine / U.S. Air Force/)Follow all of PopSci’s COVID-19 coverage here.Last week, an Air Force C-17 lifted off from Afghanistan and flew to Germany. On board the large cargo aircraft was an intricate bio-containment system populated by three government contractors who were also coronavirus patients. The April 10 flight was the first time that the contraption, first developed during the Ebola crisis in 2014 and unveiled five years ago, was used for real. The Air Force calls it the Transport Isolation System, or TIS, and it can move people who are infected with a contagious bug of some kind without giving the contagion to anyone else on the plane, or contaminating the aircraft itself. It’s also designed so that medical caregivers can go in and out, and offers them a place to take off their dirty...