United States: two fears for health at US airports linked to Mecca pilgrims

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Pilgrims returning from Hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, which ended at the end of August, caused two flights to US airports.

On Wednesday, US health officials sent an emergency response team with mobile diagnostic equipment to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport after being told that more than 100 passengers aboard of a company [EMIRA.UL] Dubai flight experienced flu-like symptoms.

Dr. Martin Cetron, director of the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine at US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told Reuters in a phone interview that health authorities had evaluated nearly 549 passengers at the airport. local hospital for more tests.

Ten people have been tested for a battery of viruses and respiratory bacteria in the hope of eliminating serious pathogens that may pose a threat to public health.

Two of them were tested positive for one particularly virulent type A influenza virus, and one of the two, severely afflicted with pneumonia, was co-infected with another respiratory virus, a said Cetron. A third person was tested positive for a cold virus.

All three had participated in the Hajj, which this year attracted about 2 million people to Mecca, said Cetron.

Seven crew members, who boarded the flight in Dubai and did not participate in the pilgrimage, were tested negative for a number of respiratory infections of public health concern, Cetron said.

The next day, two flights arriving from Europe to Philadelphia were examined by medical teams after 12 passengers reported flu-like symptoms. One of them had visited Mecca for Hajj.

Cetron said the health officials in New York were ready to quarantine a large group of sick passengers in an airport area. Out of a total of 11 passengers taken to the hospital for evaluation, 10 were tested for respiratory symptoms; one showed signs of food poisoning.

"It was a much smaller incident. It's not uncommon, "said Cetron. "Often, incoming information from multiple sources can be exaggerated beyond what we actually find."

The 10 patients with respiratory symptoms were found to be negative for the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome or MERS, a highly infectious and fatal respiratory infection that was first identified in the Middle East in 2012.

The CDC was not notified in advance of the two flights that landed in Philadelphia from Paris and Munich, but several travelers complained of illness, causing a "medical examination" of 250 passengers on these flights, a spokesperson.

Twelve passengers were found suffering from sore throat and cough, and another was tested positive for the flu, confirmed a spokesman for the CDC.

The responses were part of a well-repeated network of public health officials trained to identify and contain pathogens as airports and ports of entry in the United States.

"Our most critical problem was to address several respiratory diseases important for public health," Cetron said.

Cetron said the CDC is monitoring databases to track epidemics of infectious diseases that may cause treatment in the United States. Although unlikely, the MERS was certainly a concern for the team, he said.

"It was a low-probability, high-consequence event that we wanted to exclude," he said.

The CDC said in a statement that the cases were a reminder that the flu season was about to happen and invited all US citizens aged six months or older to be vaccinated before the end of October.