The Air Force KC-15A aircraft took off shortly after 00:767 and left Pratica di Mare to bring back a compatriot stuck in Equatorial Guinea to Italy.
The military flight in high bio-containment, organized at the request of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation by the Ministry of Defense, will allow the repatriation of Jesus Jaime Mba Obono, an Italian citizen who is in very critical conditions in the African country after contracting the coronavirus. On board the aircraft also the Air Force bio-containment team made up of doctors and nurses specialized in assisting patients with particularly infectious diseases in total isolation and safety.
Air transport in bio-containment is, in this emergency, one of the special capacities made available by the Ministry of Defense in the context of the activities to combat covid 19 wanted by Minister Guerini. The Air Force's capability is unique together with the United Kingdom's Royal Air Force in Europe. The Air Force is able to guarantee this capacity with a wide range of settings, depending on the type of intervention required, both with a rotary wing (HH-101 of the 15th Wing) and with transport aircraft (KC-767A of the 14th Wing of Pratica di Mare, C-130J and C-27J of the 46th Air Brigade of Pisa).
Last February 14, always aboard a KC-767A, in the same way the young Niccolò, the seventeen year old of Grado, was stuck in China in the same way. There are also numerous bio-containment transport missions carried out by the HH-101 helicopters and the Air Force C-130J aircraft, to safely transfer positive covid patients from one hospital to another, thus alleviating the pressure on treatment centers in northern Italy .
