Washington (AFP)
The temperature control and surveillance measures for passengers arriving at major American airports implemented in February to try to stem the Covid-19 epidemic were futile and costly, concludes an analysis published Monday by the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC).
The United States began screening passengers from China on February 3, the date from which only Americans could return to the country. Passengers were asked questions about their possible symptoms, their temperature was taken, and their information was passed on to local authorities for follow-up.
The study focuses on California, the main gateway to the United States for Asian countries. A total of 11,574 passengers were screened between February 3 and March 17.
The public health personnel of the State of California received from the federal authorities the information of these passengers (name, date of birth, travel dates, telephone number, destination ...) and then had to transmit it to the public health authorities. at the local level (city or county), which theoretically had to follow the passengers.
But of these 11,574 passengers, only three are ultimately among the 26,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in California on April 15. One of the three, from China, was confirmed a month and a half after he returned from China, suggesting that he was infected in the United States.
The program, however, mobilized the equivalent of six staff from the California public health agency full time for seven weeks, write the authors of the report, or 1,684 people monitored per hour.
"Despite intense efforts, the traveler surveillance system has not prevented the introduction of the Covid-19 in California," they write in conclusion.
The virus has spread throughout the state, and the rest of the United States, not least because many infected people have never had symptoms, although they are contagious.
Once local transmissions of the virus, unrelated to China or other countries, took place, it became futile to devote scarce resources to tracking travelers, add the authors, who recommend, for the continuation a "reconfiguration" passenger monitoring, in particular to reduce the large number of errors transmitted to passengers.
The report was released when the White House is said to be in conflict with the CDC over the re-establishment of temperature readings at 20 major airports in an effort to reassure the general public, according to internal emails seen by USA Today.
© 2020 AFP