USA: CDC announces expansion of airport surveillance for winter viruses

The US CDC and a private company have already implemented surveillance measures at airports due to the coronavirus. Now the whole thing is about to be expanded to include flu, RSV and other respiratory infections. Will it be used again for travel restrictions?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that surveillance measures would be increased at airports for respiratory infections. The US health agency is working with private company Gingko Bioworks as part of a genomic surveillance program “to test for more than 30 other priority pathogens in addition to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.” Is.” The company announced.

The program was then described as a “flexible, multimodal platform” that included three complementary approaches to collecting samples from international travelers arriving at US airports. “This includes voluntary nasal swabs, aircraft sewage samples and airport sewage samples. These measures are aimed at early detection of new SARS-CoV-2 variants and other pathogens and to bridge gaps in global surveillance.

“As we enter the fall respiratory season, it is important to expand the traveler-based genomic surveillance program to include influenza, RSV, and other pathogens. The TGS programme, which began during the COVID-19 pandemic, served as an early warning system to detect new and rare variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the same for other respiratory viruses in the future. Will do,” Dr. Cindy Friedman, chief of CDC’s travel medicine division, said in the statement. The CDC’s program has “enrolled” more than 360,000 air travelers since its launch in late 2021, the agency said, adding that it is both “voluntary and anonymous.” This includes flights from more than 135 countries around the world.

What is sold as a protective measure also has its negative aspects. In some circumstances, this could lead to people from certain countries or regions being denied entry to the United States because travelers coming from there may be carrying traces of a certain pathogen.