Data: Most TSA employees with COVID screen passengers
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There is no standardized protocol for how airport employees are screened for the coronavirus, and the vast majority of TSA workers who have tested positive are engaged in screening passengers, according to TSA data.
Despite warnings against travel from the CDC there were about 1 million people screened yesterday at airports across the United States, according to the TSA.
That’s nowhere near the volume of passengers last year — it’s actually less than half — but it’s on par with the number of people that flew in mid-March, just as the pandemic was starting.
Employees working at area airports are tested for the coronavirus, but there is no consensus on when they are tested and under what circumstances, according to Alisa D. Sisic of the Connecticut Airport Authority.
“Testing is available to all employees through the two on-site COVID-19 testing sites,” she said. “However, it is not mandated airport-wide, as each of our business partners (i.e. airlines, TSA, concessionaires) have their own respective protocols for their employees.”
When asked how often and under what circumstances TSA employees are tested for COVID-19, a spokesman for the agency wouldn’t say.
“TSA continues to follow the guidance of the CDC and any updates the CDC provides to ensure that we are providing the best protection for our workforce and the traveling public,” TSA spokesman Daniel D. Velez said by email. “TSA employees are routinely reminded that if they are feeling ill, they should not come to work to reduce the risk of spreading the virus.”
Sisic said that, to her knowledge, there have been no cases of disease transmission between airport employees and passengers in Connecticut, but airport employees have tested positive for COVID-19, and recently.
Though, Sisic said, “There is no central repository at the state or federal level” for COVID data among airport employees, the TSA does release some information about the number of security personnel that have tested positive.
Almost all of those cases have been among security personnel who directly interact with passengers.
Hardest hit in the area have been security employees at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. A total of 138 TSA employees have tested positive for the coronavirus, 128 of whom are employed screening passengers.
One of those passenger screeners who tested positive was at work on Nov. 20, according to TSA data.
Apassenger screener at Newark Liberty Airport who tested positive was at work on Nov. 20, too. That airport has had 115 TSA employees test positive, 106 of them in publicfacing roles.
Forty-eight of the 51 TSA employees that have tested positive work as screeners and have been at work as recently as Nov. 19.
Closer to Connecticut, the numbers get much smaller. There have been two TSA employees at Westchester County’s airport who tested positive, and neither of them have been at work since September.
At Bradley International Airport, all eight of the TSA employees who have tested positive have been passenger screeners, and one was at work on Nov 16.
“TSA has taken significant strides since March to provide workforce protections with required face masks, gloves, face shields, ongoing sanitization, acrylic barriers and acceleration of touchless technologies at checkpoints around the country to reduce physical contact with passengers,” Velez said. “These efforts comply with CDC guidelines and TSA has taken extraordinary steps during the pandemic to protect our roughly 64,000 employees and the traveling public.”