U.S. Airports Don’t Get Coronavirus Screening Right

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- I was stunned this weekend by the pictures of international passengers packed tightly in long arrival lines at U.S. airports. Despite months of warnings that the coronavirus was coming, the airports were woefully unprepared to screen international arrivals for health risks. The lines are the clearest symbol yet of this failure. But, in a grim irony, so too was the lack of lines when I arrived Wednesday in California. In that very recent past, flying into the U.S. was like entering a parallel universe in which Covid-19 didn't exist.

I arrived on American Airlines Flight 26 from Tokyo to Los Angeles with my wife and young son. While we were in the air the World Health Organization had announced that the novel coronavirus was now a pandemic. It’d been a very difficult decision to travel: Friends and family in Malaysia kept asking, “Are you sure you want to get on a plane?” As I scanned the gate area for what I expected would be a battery of tests and screening, I felt that we’d made a serious mistake.

The U.S. government would be right to check us and other passengers for any signs of sickness, of course. We’d just transited through Japan, a country subject to a Level 2 travel advisory from the U.S. State Department, which urges increased caution and the cancelation of nonessential trips, because of a large and growing Covid-19 outbreak. In Tokyo, our temperatures were checked, our hotel was recorded, and every page in my nearly full, 48-page passport was carefully scrutinized by an immigration officer checking that I didn’t lie about my lack of recent travel to China, where this outbreak first exploded.

As we disembarked in Los Angeles I expected similar, if not more stringent treatment. As far back as January, the federal government claimed to be rolling out expanded screenings of passengers at major U.S. airports. But that’s not what we experienced. In short, there were no temperature checks, and no questions about our recent travel history. Instead, my family was allowed to enter the U.S. after answering a handful of questions at an automated immigration kiosk, none of which differed from our past visits.

Even worse, in my opinion, was the lack of any public acknowledgement or information related to the coronavirus in the international arrivals area. In Malaysia and in Japan, we’d seen extensive, multilingual signage reminding people to wash their hands and how to contact medical personnel in the event of sickness. It was a signal of seriousness underlined by the care that airport employees — from food service to immigration officers to cleaning staff — were taking in wearing masks and gloves (and warily eyeing anyone who doesn’t).

That last step is particularly important, especially in an airport environment where germs can be imported and spread widely. Indeed, two LAX employees recently tested positive for Covid-19 and several more are in self-quarantine. Many employees complained last week that they had received inadequate training and protections. On Wednesday, the lack of preventative measures was visible everywhere: None of the airport employees I saw in the immigration, baggage and customs clearing areas were wearing gloves or masks. A representative for Los Angeles World Airports, owner and operator of LAX, did not respond to repeated inquiries about its past, current and future Covid-19 screening protocols and efforts.

Twenty-four hours after we landed in the U.S., President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House: “If an American is coming back or anybody is coming back, we’re testing. We have a tremendous testing set up where people coming in have to be tested.” But that doesn’t seem to be true. Rather than convey the need to take precautions, Trump’s bluster suggests that everything is, more or less, under control. But everything is not under control, at least not in Los Angeles, and not compared to places like Japan where the virus has already hit hard.

“I feel less safe here,” my wife said to me as we waited for our domestic connecting flight. “Maybe we shouldn't have come.”

It’s hard to believe that we would have been any safer if LAX had asked us to wait for hours in tightly packed lines with our fellow passengers to undergo a more thorough screening. But if those screenings are effective — and nobody knows right now if they are — it’s possible that they would’ve lowered the risk of the virus spreading beyond the airport (assuming anyone was carrying it). But that’s the kind of choice airports must make if they have no warning of what's coming. Coronavirus has been on the march since early January and even now we're not ready.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stacey Shick at sshick@bloomberg.net

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Adam Minter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is the author of “Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade” and the forthcoming "Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale."

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