The regulatory agency that oversees civil aviation in China has issued new guidelines advising flight attendants to wear disposable diapers on flights to and from countries with high rates of coronavirus infection.
That way, cabin crews can avoid entering the germy confines of airplane bathrooms.
Bloomberg reports that the Civil Aviation Administration of China dispensed this advice in a new, 38-page list of rules for airlines to follow in order to prevent the spread of Covid-19.
The diaper recommendation applies to flights that access places where infections exceed 500 in every one million people.
In addition to depending on Depends, flight attendants on those routes should also wear, according to the document, "medical protective masks, double-layer disposable medical rubber gloves, goggles, disposable caps, disposable protective clothing, and disposable shoe covers."
Removing all of that in the bathroom would have been a hassle anyway.
The guidelines further suggest using disposable curtains to divide each airplane cabin into a "clean area, buffer zone, passenger sitting area and quarantine area,” with the last three rows reserved as an "emergency quarantine area."
Though Chinese air travel came to an almost total halt at the beginning of the pandemic, domestic flights returned to 86% of 2019 levels this summer, according to Newsweek.
Around the same time, airlines in the U.S. and Europe began trying to persuade skittish customers of the safety of plane trips, touting space-age air filtration systems and pointing to studies that suggest the low likelihood of virus transmission on flights.
Since the virus is most dangerous in the air we breathe rather than the surfaces we touch, it seems like adding diapers to flight attendants' uniforms is overkill.
But hey, you can't spell PPE without—you know what? Never mind. We'll hold it.
