U.S. to tighten sick passenger, quarantine rules

By Paul Simao

ATLANTA (Reuters) – Citing a need to protect Americans from
bird flu and other diseases, U.S. health officials on Tuesday
proposed regulatory changes requiring airlines and shipping
firms to hand over passenger and crew lists on demand and
expand how they report serious illnesses.

The changes would apply to planes and ships arriving from
outside the United States as well as some domestic flights,
according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
which proposed the regulatory overhaul.

The Atlanta-based CDC, the federal agency responsible for
monitoring and responding to health threats, also said it
wanted authority to vaccinate and treat quarantined people and
a clear set of defined legal rights for those quarantined.

It noted that the quarantine powers would generally only be
used in situations where a person posed a threat to public
health and refused to cooperate with a voluntary request to be
isolated.

In addition, pilots and ship captains would only be
required to report passengers or crew who showed symptoms of
certain serious infectious diseases, such as cholera, yellow
fever and SARS.

“We’re not talking about quarantining anybody for a sniffle
or a cough,” said Dr. Martin Centron, director of the CDC’s
division of global migration and quarantine. “That isn’t going
to be the case and that hasn’t occurred.”

The proposals come amid growing concern around the world
over the spread of bird flu from Asia. The virus cannot yet
easily infect people, but it has killed at least 67 people in
five Asian nations since late 2003.

Bird flu has yet to surface in the United States.

The CDC, however, does not want to wait until emerging
infections take root before plugging what it sees as gaps in
the regulations governing control of communicable diseases.
These rules have not been substantially revised for 25 years.

The agency learned a lesson during the SARS outbreak of
2003 when problems getting passenger information from airlines
stymied its efforts to trace the contacts of those who had been
infected.

One of its new proposals, which will be open to public
comment for two months, calls for airlines and cruise lines to
submit passenger and crew lists electronically at its request.