A Harvard doctor says the dozens of passengers sickened on international flights are a clear 'warning shot' of a worst-case scenario

pulse

September 7, 2018 6:46 PM

The CDC is investigating illnesses that sickened dozens of passengers on three separate international flights headed into the US this week. Some passengers were traveling from Mecca, where the Hajj pilgrimage was recently underway, and crowds of millions gathered.

illnesses that sickened dozens
international flights

There have been a lot of coughing, feverish, sickly passengers flying into the US this week.

First, there was an Emirates flight from Dubai that landed at JFK airport Wednesday morning and had to be quarantined. Nearly a dozen passengers on board that flight were hospitalized and given anti-viral drugs. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said "

a more serious illness showed up at a gathering like the Hajj, it could quickly spell disaster.

James Steckelberg

"Public health experts have been saying for years that, first, there's inadequate surveillance around the world of human illness to really detect infections," Lipsitch said. "Large gatherings, including the Hajj, which may be involved here, are particular points of risk."

"Imagine that it was MERS, and it arrived in an airport where nobody recognized it, and then those people all went, scattered," Lipsitch said. "I do wonder why we've seen relatively few transports or movements of the really scariest diseases."

A perfect breeding ground of global diseases

Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Oman, and Qatar

Lipsitch says one of the best ways for the world to prepare for future outbreaks would be to have more health care professionals around the world trained to identify and report illnesses, sending in samples for testing before sicknesses head off into airplanes buzzing about the globe.

"One thing we can't stop doing is breathing," Lipsitch said.

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