Posted on 05/29/2007 8:54:19 PM PDT by TornadoAlley3
ATLANTA — A man with a rare and exceptionally dangerous form of tuberculosis likely entered the United States at the Champlain Port of Entry.
That is according to a story in the online version of the Montreal Gazette today.
In a press conference today, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Julie Gerberding said the Georgia man is infected with extensively drug resistant tuberculosis, also called XDR-TB.
“We have no suspicion that this patient was highly infectious, in fact medical evidence would suggest that his potential for transmission would be on the low side, but we know it (the case of tuberculosis) isn’t viral,” she said. “We are considering not only his own ability to transmit, but also the seriousness of this organism and the chance that some passenger on this plane could be one that was at a special risk for serious tuberculosis on the basis of their own personal medical history.”
The man has been placed in quarantine by the U.S. government after possibly exposing passengers and crew on two trans-Atlantic flights this month.
The infected man flew from Atlanta to Paris on May 12 aboard Air France Flight 385. He returned to North America on May 24 aboard Czech Air Flight 0104 from Prague to Montreal, then drove into the United States. It is likely he passed through the Champlain Port of Entry and drove south on the Northway.
The CDC urged people on the same flights to get checked for tuberculosis.
It is the first time since 1963 that the government issued a quarantine order. The last such order was to quarantine a patient with smallpox, according to the CDC.
The government issued the order after a CDC official reached the man by phone in Italy and told him not to take commercial flights, but he flew back to North America anyway, said Dr. Martin Cetron, director of the CDC’s division of global migration and quarantine.
“He was told in no uncertain terms not to take a flight back,” Cetron said.
Cetron reached the man once he was back in the United States. At that point, he voluntarily went to a New York hospital, then was flown by the CDC to an Atlanta-area hospital.
He is not facing prosecution, health officials said. Federal officials declined to release details about him.
The man is hospitalized in Atlanta in respiratory isolation, according to the World Health Organization.
He was potentially infectious at the time of the flights, so CDC officials recommended medical exams for cabin crew members on those flights, as well as passengers sitting in the same rows or within two rows.
CDC officials did not release row numbers but said the airlines were working with health officials to contact those passengers. Passengers who should be tested will be contacted by health officials from their home countries, Cetron said.
This smells alot! :~)
Based on the media blackout on his identity and any details, I’m betting HIV+ gay male.....
More more information here:
ajc.com
‘Cause he’d give it to everybody in the courtroom?
Boy — this sure makes me feel safe with all the Homeland Security “Federalized Professionals” who can torment, delay and perform body searches on 85 year old women and deny toddlers their bottles aboard aircraft -— but 20 million Mexicans of mixed level of criminality cross the border by the THOUSANDS daily and find jobs with equally criminal American families and businesses.....
Then this KNOWN “no fly” candidate puts the world at risk because HE wants to travel...
How in hell does a “no fly” bird get through Customs and Passport Control?????
In a sane world — this TB “Typhoid Mary” would be charged with every applicable crime, his passport burned and then bill his sorry ass for every cent his criminal behavior has cost...
I want to see a picture and hear the background on this turkey....
Then hang his ass.....
.....officials said the man had recently been diagnosed with TB and knew when he left the United States on May 12 that he should not travel.
After testing revealed his tuberculosis was “extensively drug-resistant,” he was contacted in Europe by health authorities and told not to take a commercial flight home – advice he also ignored.
Martin Cetron, a physician who directs CDC’s Division of Global Migration and Quarantine, said he spoke to the man by phone Friday and directed him to go to a New York hospital. The man went willingly.
Although the man had broken the “covenant of trust” that is usually sufficient to keep infectious TB patients from willfully exposing others, “from our perspective no laws were broken here,” Gerberding said.
“XDR-TB” is rare in the United States, with only 49 cases detected since 1993, of which at least 12 were fatal, according to the CDC.
This month, public health officials in Arizona obtained a court order allowing them to confine and treat a 27-year-old dual Russian-U.S. citizen who had undergone months of TB treatment in Russia, where he had often been homeless. He is undergoing treatment for XDR-TB in a Phoenix hospital.
How did this guy become infected with XDR TB, anyone heard? Was he infected with another strain that mutated, or was it the XDR all along? If the latter, hope someone is doing some contact tracing to figure out from whom this guy contracted it.
Patient zero in this case may have been from Siberia. No info in the article on whether any of the other people at the Market Hotel have been quarantined.
He gets through by flying on a foreign carrier to Canada...the no fly lists apply to carriers entering the US.
How ‘bout those secure borders eh?
My thoughts also. Atlanta, Paree, Italy, Greece and Montreal, sounds awfully queer to me.
Well, where the heck is that person?
and then when possible, his arse should be charged with some kind of endangerment to the public and should receive jail time...
According to FNC’s Judge Naplotano this morning, this guy has no criminal liability. Because there was never a court order obtained to restrict him from flying, he broke no laws in doing so. Also, according to Napolitano, it’s harder to federally quarantine someone these days than it was the last time this was done, back in the ‘60’s.
recent articles about TB
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,263380,00.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/02/AR2007050202831_pf.html
Jeepers.
CDC officials did not release any details about where the man sat on the flights or how many people may have been exposed. They said they would be working with the airlines to contact passengers directly. For now, they said, they're focusing on the trans-Atlantic flights because — while the risk is very low — it's where people would have had the most extended period of exposure to him.
"We're balancing both the needs to protect individual freedoms and the responsibility to protect the public," Gerberding said.
"We also want to reassure people who weren't on these flights that the risk of exposure in random air flight is extremely low," she said.
I am thinking that there are many other people that might need to be tested. The airport workers, the general public that was there that day that may have come into contact with him. TSA personnel? Airline employees at check-in, at the ticket counter, at the gate. Any restaurant/bar employees? Sky caps? Shuttle bus/cab drivers? The list goes on and on. This guy has affected the lives of countless people!
His wife better be quarantined also.
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