NY Post article published yesterday "Dominican Republic tourist says flight was full of sick passengers"

What I find interesting is the apparent widespread nature of an illness. So far, the news reports about tourists getting sick in the DR have focused on relatively small numbers (mostly fatalities) spread over a long period of time. Isolated incidents, although serious. In contrast, this article suggests that there is currently a large percentage of DR tourists getting sick. First time I've seen anything like that. It's possible this was something like a wave of flu unrelated to the recent reports, but it's also possible something is ramping up down there … may be good to watch if this develops into something.

I've included a map of the island (Hispanola). DR is the nation on the eastern side of the island, Haiti is on the western side. The town under discussion in the article, Punta Cana, is all the way on the far eastern side of the island (most distant from Haiti).

From the start of the article:

A Mississippi woman who went on a mother-daughter trip to the Dominican Republic says she fell ill — and, adding insult to injury, was stuck on a miserable return flight filled with passengers suffering from similar symptoms.

Tracy McCraw, of Madison, said she wasn’t the only one with flu-like symptoms on the plane home last month from her five-day trip to Punta Cana.

“It wasn’t like you usually go on a plane and you’re leaving and see other people sick on the plane,” McCraw, 49, told The Post. “There was one lady next to me who was all bundled up and I could tell she was sick. It was obvious.”

https://nypost.com/2019/06/18/dominican-republic-tourist-says-flight-was-full-of-sick-passengers/

>>6790025

>>6790111

>>6790126

I'd posted earlier this bread about Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic, and noted it was on the far side of the island from Haiti.

In light of your post, a more relevant point is that it's the point on the island nearest Puerto Rico (and therefore a possible staging point for smuggling operations into US territory)

Reposting various maps, including stealing your image of the border and converting to jpg

>>6790361

Would it leave an obvious paper trail if the flights were not commercial? My thinking here is that, without customs barriers between Puerto Rico and CONUS, no one would have any idea what cargo is on an airplane running that route, if the origin and destination facilities are compromised.

But not being involved in aviation, I don't know if that's sensible or if there are airport security or cargo manifest considerations that make it non-viable.

Not suggesting a significant traffic is by air, just probing whether the idea is possible.

(I'm not one to post captcha images, but this one was fun.)