Man with TB disputes officials’ story
A Georgia man infected with a potentially deadly form of drug-resistant tuberculosis told a newspaper that health authorities here never explicitly barred him from leaving on an overseas trip that may have exposed hundreds of people in the U.S., Europe and Canada.
The man, who spoke to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Tuesday, said health officials only said that they “preferred” he stay home in the Atlanta area. The man then reportedly left for Europe to get married.
On Wednesday, officials from the Fulton County Health and Wellness Department and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that they clearly and emphatically told him to stay put.
“He was told in no uncertain terms that he had a serious, contagious disease,” said Dr. Steven Katkowsky, director of the Fulton County Department of Health. “We told him not to travel.”
The conflicting stories are the latest twist in the series of missteps and misunderstandings that have sparked an international effort to track down people who may have had close contact with the infected man.
Dr. Martin Cetron, director of CDC’s division of global migration and quarantine, acknowledged at a news conference Wednesday that the agency is making slow progress in reaching passengers and crew aboard the man’s transatlantic flights.
Authorities in the United States and several European countries are tracking down about 50 people who sat near the man on his Atlanta-to-Paris flight on May 12 and 30 people on his Prague-to-Montreal return May 24. They will be offered testing.
Investigators were looking into how the man and his wife got through U.S. customs in Champlain, N.Y., when all border crossings had been given his name and told to hold him if he appeared, Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said.
Infection specialists say the case shows how vulnerable the nation is, from outdated quarantine laws to the speed of international flight. What if, they ask, the man had carried something more contagious, such as the next super-flu?
“It’s regretful that we weren’t able to stop that,” said Dr. Martin Cetron of the CDC of how the man fled when U.S. health officials tracked him down in Rome and told him not to get on an airplane.
Should the CDC have asked Italian health authorities to put the man in isolation? That was under discussion when the CDC learned the man had fled, Cetron said.
“We need to rely on people to do the right thing,” Cetron said, saying the CDC hesitates to invoke its quarantine powers. “Can we improve our systems? Absolutely. There will be many lessons learned from this.”