Free Republic

he nation's top public health agency is expanding a program that tests international travelers for COVID-19 and other infectious diseases. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention program asks arriving international passengers to volunteer to have their noses swabbed and answer questions about their travel. The program operates at six airports and on Tuesday, the CDC said it was adding two more — Chicago's O'Hare and Miami. Those locations should provide more information about respiratory infections coming out of South America, Africa and Asia, particularly, CDC officials said. "Miami and Chicago enable us to collect samples coming from areas of...

After being stuffed into an airplane cabin for a long, redeye flight from overseas, you’re finally on your way home — but first, the government wants to shove a cotton swab up your nose. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is asking passengers returning from international destinations at four U.S. airports to volunteer for its Traveler-based Genomic Surveillance (TGS) program. Passengers at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, Boston Logan International Airport, Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C., and San Francisco International Airport can now have their nasal discharge anonymously sampled as they leave the travel hubs.

A Covid-19 nasal swab test punctured a US woman's brain lining, causing fluid to leak from her nose and putting her at risk of life-threatening infection, doctors reported in a medical journal Thursday. The patient, who is in her 40s, had an undiagnosed rare condition and the test she received may have been carried out improperly, a sequence of improbable events that means the risk from nasal tests remains very low. But her case showed health care professionals should take care to follow testing protocols closely, Jarrett Walsh, senior author of the paper that appeared in JAMA Otolaryngology–Head & Neck...