Filed at 8:45 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Thousands of customs and immigrations
inspectors and other federal homeland security workers are being
trained to spot symptoms of SARS, and they have orders to detain
people with symptoms of the highly contagious illness.
The training is part of the government's effort to prevent an
outbreak in the United States of severe acute respiratory syndrome.
Officials said travelers would be detained if they had possible
signs of SARS, including high fever, dry cough, breathing trouble,
or if they said they are experiencing these symptoms. A public
health official would be summoned to give a medical evaluation.
Homeland Security Department spokesman Dennis Murphy said 22
major U.S. airports, including Kennedy International in New York and
Los Angeles International, have public health officials on site.
Murphy did not provide a list of the airports, but he said others
among them were Seattle, Chicago, Miami and Dulles, outside
Washington, D.C. Other airports, he said, have health officials on
call.
Murphy said he was not aware of a traveler being detained against
his or her will for a suspected case of SARS as a result of his
department's heightened vigilance.
Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, said quarantine officials have been stationed at
airports for decades to detect disease and are sensitive to the
inconvenience of detention. ``We really do try to be respectful of
citizens rights,'' she told a House Energy and Commerce
subcommittee.
Robert Bonner, commissioner of the department's Bureau of Customs
and Border Protection, said special attention was being given to
passengers arriving into the United States on 51 daily flights from
Asia, including Hong Kong, Singapore and Beijing.
``We have the authority to detain any individual who appears to
have SARS, and we can, will and should exercise that authority,''
Bonner said.
There are 63 probable U.S. cases of SARS, the CDC says.
The disease has peaked in Singapore, Hong Kong and Toronto. In
China and Taiwan, cases are increasing.
``China has the resources necessary to deal with this,'' David
Heymann, head of the World Health Organization's communicable
diseases program, told the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
``But public health has been neglected in China. ... We don't know
if China will commit the full resources necessary.''
Hong Kong has installed an infrared system to try to detect
incoming travelers who have a fever. So far 37 have been identified
and it is something the agency is watching to see if it will be
useful in the future, Heymann said.
Noting that the University of California has refused to admit 500
students from China for summer school this year, Rep. Ed Markey,
D-Mass., asked Heymann about the proper criteria for turning people
away. Heymann said guidelines include whether they have had contact
with a SARS patient or if they've been in a hospital that treats
SARS within the previous 10 days.
The U.S. training sessions to spot SARS have been going on for
about a month, largely set in motion by an April 4 executive order
by President Bush that gave federal health officials authority to
quarantine people sick with SARS, Murphy said.
The Bush order stems from an incident in which a traveler
arriving in the United States with some symptoms refused detention
and got on a train for further travel. Health officials had to
scramble to see who the traveler may have exposed before determining
he did not have SARS, Gerberding said.
Involved in the effort are customs inspectors, immigration
inspectors, workers who screen people and baggage at airports and
employees who work at detention centers, where people caught
entering the United States illegally are taken.
``We've issued instructions essentially telling our people at
borders, airports and detention centers to be on the alert for
people exhibiting symptoms,'' Murphy said.
The department has made masks and gloves available to workers if
they encounter someone with SARS symptoms, Murphy said.
The CDC's Web site says the primary way that SARS appears to
spread is by close person-to-person contact. That includes touching
the skin of other people or touching objects that are contaminated
with infectious droplets -- left behind when someone infected with
SARS coughs or sneezes -- and then touching your eye, nose or mouth.
It also is possible that SARS can be spread more broadly through the
air or by other ways that are not currently known, the CDC says.
The CDC says most of the U.S. cases of SARS have occurred among
travelers returning to the United States from other parts of the
world with SARS.
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On the Net:
Department of Homeland Security:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/deptofhomeland/
CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/
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AP Medical Writer Lauran Neergaard contributed to this story.
