EU disease centre urges tests of air passengers in US TB scare
(BRUSSELS) - Airline passengers and crew on two flights who were near a man infected with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis should be tested for contact with the disease, the European Commission said Thursday.
The Commission said the European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) considers that the risk of contracting the drug-resistant disease is low but it has nevertheless recommended that people be checked.
"The ECDC's advice is to perform contact tracing for passengers two rows ahead, two rows behind and the row of the infected passenger, and the cabin crew concerned," a Commission spokesman on health issues said.
"The ECDC's advice is that the risk for these persons is very limited, other passengers are not considered at risk," he added.
Those concerned -- passengers on an Air France flight from Atlanta to Paris on May 12 and a Czech Air service from Prague to Montreal on May 24 -- will be contacted by their national health authorities.
The man, a newlywed, is being held in isolation and under armed guard at a US hospital -- the first person in more than four decades to be placed under mandatory isolation by US health authorities.
He is also reported to have flown to Athens on May 14, taken an Olympic Airlines flight to the Greek island of Santorini on May 16, and then returned to Athens from nearby Mykonos on May 21. He also traveled to Rome the same day.
US health authorities have urged about 80 people sitting in the five rows closest to him on the two transatlantic flights to undergo tests. They said no significant risk was posed by his presence on the short-haul flights.
In September, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed 53 extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) cases in South Africa, all but one of them fatal, triggering a worldwide health alert.
Most of the patients also had the virus that causes AIDS.
More than 5,000 people in 18 countries have been diagnosed with the virulent TB strain, but with a far lower mortality rate, according to the WHO.
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