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Man with rare TB crossed border at Champlain
ptressrepublican.com ^ | 05/29/07 | MIKE STOBBE

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.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: cdc; champlain; tb; xdrtb
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To: Suzy Quzy

This smells alot! :~)


21 posted on 05/29/2007 10:14:27 PM PDT by landerwy (Democrats are responsible for the 50% gas price spike since the election!)
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To: TornadoAlley3

Based on the media blackout on his identity and any details, I’m betting HIV+ gay male.....


22 posted on 05/29/2007 10:19:32 PM PDT by Cogadh na Sith (Banning Bread and Circuses is the New Bread and Circuses....)
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To: Suzy Quzy
The man was told by the CDC, while on his honeymoon in Rome, to check-in with Italian health authorities. The man said a CDC staff member told him he'd need to turn himself into Italian health authorities and agree to go into isolation and treatment in that country for an indefinite period of time. I thought to myself: 'You're nuts.' I wasn't going to do that. They told me I had been put on the no-fly list and my passport was flagged," the man said. The man said the CDC told him he could not fly aboard a commercial airliner with his disease. He did not want to be treated in Italy. So he decided to fly to Canada, bypassing the American airports, then rent a car and drive across the border.

More more information here:
ajc.com

23 posted on 05/29/2007 10:37:16 PM PDT by rawhide
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To: sageb1

‘Cause he’d give it to everybody in the courtroom?


24 posted on 05/29/2007 10:41:02 PM PDT by HiTech RedNeck
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To: TornadoAlley3
So he was in France, Czech Republic, and Italy at least. Likely more countries. The get him on the phone when he's in Italy and tell him to stay put or not come back or something. At that point maybe they even canceled his return flight to the US or put out some kind of warning to US airport customs. So maybe he got a flight to Canada as a way of getting around the fact that he couldn't get a direct flight back? If so, sounds like a security hole. You'd think we'd coordinate stuff like this better with airlines all over. Like if the guy is this dangerous, State Dept. should alert other countries so he can't legally cross borders or get on or off airplanes anyplace. Possibly he ended up getting the flight from Czech Repub. because his travel options were closing down in France and Italy, maybe Czech Repub. just hadn't gotten the memo yet that he wasn't supposed to fly. This sounds like a real cluster-F, is why the guy ended up with the weird sounding itinerary. Plus that he was non-compliant, both in leaving the US, and after they got hold of him in Italy.

Am I reading that right?
25 posted on 05/29/2007 11:32:20 PM PDT by omnivore
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To: rawhide
Good link. So he was also in Greece! And they think he caught it originally on an earlier trip to Asia. This is more 12 Monkeys with each drip of info coming out.

I still don't get how, if the US can put him on a no-fly list when he's in Italy, he somehow can get to Czech Repub., and then on to Canada. Sounds like bungling.
26 posted on 05/29/2007 11:43:40 PM PDT by omnivore
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To: omnivore

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.....


27 posted on 05/30/2007 1:14:14 AM PDT by river rat (Semper Fi - You may turn the other cheek, but I prefer to look into my enemy's vacant dead eyes.)
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To: omnivore

.....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.

http://www.fortwayne.com


28 posted on 05/30/2007 3:18:48 AM PDT by TornadoAlley3
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To: TornadoAlley3

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.


29 posted on 05/30/2007 3:22:18 AM PDT by mewzilla (Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist. John Adams)
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To: TornadoAlley3
Some info at the end of this article on where the man may have picked up the TB.

a

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.

30 posted on 05/30/2007 3:34:02 AM PDT by mewzilla (Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist. John Adams)
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To: mewzilla
The above link...

U.S. takes rare action to isolate TB patient He may have infected others on travels to and from Europe

31 posted on 05/30/2007 3:34:53 AM PDT by mewzilla (Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist. John Adams)
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To: river rat

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?


32 posted on 05/30/2007 3:37:41 AM PDT by BubbaJunebug
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To: Cogadh na Sith
Reply to post #22

My thoughts also. Atlanta, Paree, Italy, Greece and Montreal, sounds awfully queer to me.

33 posted on 05/30/2007 3:40:18 AM PDT by Lewite (Praise YAHWEH and Proclaim His Wonderful Name! Islam, the end time Beast-the harlot of Babylon.)
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To: mewzilla
Correction: "The man is a resident of a South of Market hotel where six other patients have come down with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis believed to have originated from a patient who contracted it in Siberia."

Well, where the heck is that person?

34 posted on 05/30/2007 3:41:30 AM PDT by mewzilla (Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist. John Adams)
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To: george76
not only should he be charged for the flight to Atlanta, but also for the cost of testing and possibly treating the hundreds he exposed the disease too....

and then when possible, his arse should be charged with some kind of endangerment to the public and should receive jail time...

35 posted on 05/30/2007 3:48:03 AM PDT by cherry
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To: cherry

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.


36 posted on 05/30/2007 3:51:29 AM PDT by mewzilla (Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist. John Adams)
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To: mewzilla

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


37 posted on 05/30/2007 3:52:52 AM PDT by TornadoAlley3
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To: TornadoAlley3
Thanks for the links.

Jeepers.

38 posted on 05/30/2007 4:00:57 AM PDT by mewzilla (Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist. John Adams)
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To: rawhide
"Normally when someone has tuberculosis, we influence them through a covenant of trust," Gerberding said. While saying tests show the man is at extremely low risk of transmitting the disease, Gerberding said the agency is urging passengers who sat in nearby seats and rows during the two long trans-Atlantic flights receive TB tests as a precaution, and that others who traveled aboard the flights be offered the opportunity to be tested if they have concerns.

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!

39 posted on 05/30/2007 4:18:34 AM PDT by rawhide
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To: rawhide

His wife better be quarantined also.


40 posted on 05/30/2007 5:41:42 AM PDT by Suzy Quzy (Hillary '08...Her Phoniness is Genuine!!!)
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