Screenings Were Porous as Trump Spurred Exodus From Virus Hot Spots
Source: nytimes
A House report found that Americans fleeing Asia and Europe to beat the president’s travel bans faced few temperature checks or other rigorous screenings to see if they were bringing the virus home.
May 7, 2020 Updated 7:04 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s go-to defense of his early response to the coronavirus is his decision to close down travel from China, the virus’s original epicenter, and then from ravaged Europe.
But those hasty decisions led to exoduses of American citizens, with packed, chaotic airports and, according to a new congressional report, porous screenings for passengers who could have been bringing the coronavirus home with them.
Medical officials on contract from the Department of Homeland Security checked the temperature of just 10 percent of more than 250,000 travelers at U.S. airports arriving from travel-restricted countries during a 10-week span from January to March, according to a report released Thursday by the House Oversight and Reform Committee, undercutting one of the centerpieces of Mr. Trump’s argument that his administration responded aggressively to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.
If customs officers noticed symptoms among travelers returning from restricted countries, they referred them to the medical officials on contract stationed at the airport.
But out of more than 250,000 travelers those medical officials screened, just under 1,500 were given a third screening by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials between Jan. 17 and March 29. And C.D.C. officials were the ones primarily determining whether a traveler displaying symptoms needed to be federally quarantined.
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Homeland security officials from the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office told the committee that the informal policy was to check one of every 10 passengers because they “don’t want to slow things down,” according to the report.....................................................
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/07/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-hot-spots-screenings.html
With all that is going on today, I missed this important House investigation report.
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Travelers waiting to go through customs at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport on March 14.Credit...Austin Boschen, via Associated Press
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