Boston Globe August 28, 2005 CDC STEPS UP ITS PANDEMIC PRECAUTIONS AT US AIRPORTS Logan is among those getting new quarantine units By Justin Gillis, Washington Post WASHINGTON -- The government plans to more than triple the number of quarantine stations at airports around the country and hire scores of health officers as part of a broad plan to try to stop deadly infectious diseases from entering the United States. Ten new stations, at airports stretching from Alaska to Puerto Rico, are already open or nearing completion, and some 50 new health officers are undergoing training. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plans to build an additional seven stations as soon as it can get the money. Eight stations that have existed for years are gaining staff, so that when the plan is complete, the country will be blanketed by a network of 25 centers designed as a first line of defense against a global disease pandemic. In practical terms, the plan will not mean much change for international air travelers -- at least in normal times. It does mean that if a passenger gets sick on a flight, when the plane lands it is likely to be boarded by federal health officers specifically trained to recognize exotic diseases, not just by local emergency crews. If a global pandemic looms, though, the plan calls for the centers to play a key role in setting up a medical firebreak that would try to keep the disease out of the United States. The stations would help coordinate broad programs under which thousands of air travelers might be subject to medical evaluation, or offered medical pamphlets and advice, before being allowed to enter the country. Federal officials emphasized that passengers would be quarantined only if there is strong reason to suspect they have been exposed to a serious disease, and then only long enough to rule out that possibility or get them into medical-isolation wards at hospitals. "We're not going to lock you up for days," said Jennifer Morcone, a spokeswoman for the CDC, noting the negative connotation the word "quarantine" once carried. "The goal here is to take care of people." Many of the new centers are being housed temporarily in small offices or suites, but eventually they will include examination rooms that will allow health officers to isolate and evaluate a few ill passengers at a time, according to the CDC. The centers will never be big enough to quarantine entire planeloads of people, but would play a coordinating role if such drastic measures ever became necessary. Washington Dulles International Airport is getting a new center, with some staff already in place and construction underway on a small office suite. Other centers are opening this year at airports in Anchorage, Boston, Detroit, El Paso, Houston, Minneapolis, Newark, San Diego, and San Juan. Quarantine stations have existed for years in Atlanta, Chicago, Honolulu, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle, now all those are growing. The CDC aims to open at least seven more quarantine offices when it can get the money, to bring the national total to 25. Cities at the top of the priority list include Charlotte, Dallas, Denver, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Phoenix, but that list is not final and other cities are under consideration. The 50 staff members already hired more than double the CDC's presence at the nation's airports. Leaders of most of the new and existing stations met last week to develop operating procedures. The plan is a response to rising fears about bioterrorism or a potential pandemic of respiratory illness. For example, specialists fear that a highly lethal form of influenza now circulating among birds in Asia, if it undergoes certain genetic changes, could start spreading rapidly among humans, potentially killing millions. In an age of global air travel, such an illness could jump from foreign countries to the United States within hours. The plan is also an attempt to apply lessons from the 2003 scare over a new disease: severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world, including thousands in Toronto, were placed in quarantine and entire cities in China were cordoned off before that ailment was controlled. It never gained a foothold in the United States, but a few cases came in on planes, and the CDC found itself scrambling to notify potentially exposed passengers. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company