Washington – The top U.S. health official Wednesday accused a patient with drug-resistant tuberculosis of deceiving medical advisers and intentionally eluding them as he jetted across Europe.
“If we had to do it all over again, knowing what we know now, we would have acted much earlier,” Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a House committee.
The patient, Andrew Speaker, 31, of Atlanta, offered lawmakers a conflicting version at another congressional hearing. He denied that he was ever told he needed to be in isolation.
“I didn’t go running off and hide from people,” Speaker told a Senate subcommittee, testifying via telephone from National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver. “It’s a complete fallacy. It’s a lie.”
Tales of what took place from the time, in May, when Speaker was diagnosed with an extensively drug-resistant strain of TB to his arrival last week in Denver unfolded in the two hearings.
Speaker said he was told by U.S. health officials he had to either stay in Italy or charter a private jet home and pay the estimated $140,000 cost himself.
Speaker instead flew from Prague, Czech Republic, to Montreal and drove into the U.S. – coming in contact with travelers in several countries.
“By giving this patient the benefit of the doubt, we put other passengers at risk,” Gerberding said.
Tests conducted at National Jewish have determined Speaker’s TB is not highly contagious.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we dodged a bullet,” Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said at the hearing of the House’s Homeland Security Committee.
Lawmakers criticized what they called lapses by health, homeland-security and border- protection officials.
“What it illustrates is the number of vulnerabilities in our system,” Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo., said.
Speaker said health officials knew that he planned to travel. He flew to Greece for his wedding, leaving May 12.
“Yes, I was told that (they) would prefer that I not travel, but I was also told I was not contagious, I was not a threat to anyone, there was no need to sequester me,” he said.
In a telephone interview with Speaker and his family Wednesday on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” a tape recording made May 10 – shortly before Speaker flew to Europe – was played.
On the tape of a meeting with Speaker, Dr. Eric Benning, Fulton County, Ga., medical director, is heard to say: “Because of the fact that you actually are not contagious, there’s no reason for you to be sequestered. … As far as we can tell, you are not a threat to anybody right now.”
Instead of returning from Greece, Speaker went to Italy, just as a test came back revealing he had a drug-resistant type of tuberculosis. Once Speaker changed his travel plans in Europe, the CDC should have intervened, Gerberding said.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection failed to snag Speaker when he drove from Canada into the U.S. on May 24.
Speaker was allowed through at a border station, even though his name appeared on a list of people who should be stopped.
“I can offer no defense for what happened that day,” said W. Ralph Basham, commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The failure rested with a border-station agent in Champlain, N.Y., Basham said.
That agent saw an alert in the system indicating Speaker should be held and his nose and mouth covered with a mask. But the agent, Basham testified, decided Speaker did not look ill and let him through.
“His actions appear to be indefensible,” Basham said.
Border agents no longer will have the discretion to ignore an alert attached to the name of someone trying to cross into the U.S., he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
