Washington – The government is investigating how a globe-trotting tuberculosis patient drove back into the country even after his name was put on a watch list provided to border guards.
The failure exposed a major gap in a system that is supposed to keep the direst of diseases from crossing borders.
But the communications breakdown at a U.S.-Canada border crossing was only one of a series of missed opportunities to catch the Atlanta man and his wife who seemed determined to elude health officials.
And worried infection specialists say it shows how vulnerable the nation is, from outdated quarantine laws and the speed of international flight, to killer germs carried by travelers. What if, they ask, the man had carried not hard-to-spread tuberculosis but something very contagious such as the next super-flu?
“It’s regretful that we weren’t able to stop that,” said Dr. Martin Cetron of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said of how the man fled when U.S. health officials tracked him down in Rome and told him not to get on an airplane.
Among the problems the CDC identified: dealing with time- zone differences; lack of coordination between American and international authorities; and how to speed up retrieval of passenger manifests from airlines.
The episode also raised questions about how rapidly health officials could respond to a similar emergency with other deadly infectious diseases.
CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said Fulton County, Ga., health officials contacted the CDC on May 10 and 11 to talk about the man, who had told them he planned to fly despite his diagnosis and their urging.
“We discussed with them several options to prohibit him from flying,” Skinner said, all of which needed to be taken by local authorities.
Skinner said the CDC never heard back from local health officials until May 18 – after the man had already left the U.S.
While Georgia health officials can obtain a court order to restrict the actions of a person or to even involuntarily commit them for treatment, Georgia’s state epidemiologist Susan Lance said individuals first need to be served with a medical order telling them what they can and cannot do. Fulton County health officials have said they tried to hand-deliver the man a medical order not to travel, but couldn’t find him on May 11.
Lance said health officials thought the man was departing at a later date, not May 12.
The CDC did get word to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol before the man and his wife crossed into the country at Champlain, N.Y., a Department of Homeland Security spokesman said Wednesday.
Customs “is reviewing the facts involved with the decision to admit the individuals into the country without isolation,” said DHS spokesman Russ Knocke.
Both Homeland Security’s inspector general and internal affairs officials are investigating, reflecting the seriousness of the case, Knocke said.
Congress is probing, too. The House Homeland Security Committee has set a June 6 hearing.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said the case shows “something is wrong with the training and supervision of our border agents. … I shudder to think that this individual could have been a terrorist.”
The New York Times and Cox News Service contributed to this report.
