REPORT: AGENCIES CREATED RISKS IN VIRUS EVACUATION
GAO cites clashes, infighting among government officials
A chaotic effort to return hundreds of Americans to the United States in the earliest days of the coronavirus outbreak — including bureaucratic infighting over whether f lights out of Wuhan, China, were an “evacuation” or “repatriation” — put the evacuees, federal officials and even U.S. communities at risk, a government watchdog concluded.
The U.S. government-led missions, which included an operation to evacuate Americans from a virus-stricken cruise ship off the coast of Japan in February 2020, were plagued by “serious fundamental coordination challenges,” the Government Accountability Office concluded in a report requested by Congress and released Monday.
The episodes have already been the focus of a whistleblower complaint that sparked a pair of investigations, including a review conducted by lawyers at the Department of Health and Human Services. Those prior reports documented safety lapses, including health officials being told to remove protective gear when meeting with the Wuhan evacuees to avoid “bad optics.”
In their 13-month probe, GAO auditors faulted the health department for an array of broader management failures, including a lack of preparation that led to agencies within HHS feuding over which division was in charge of the rescue operations, sometimes because of the terminology used in government plans.
The disorganized federal response also meant that officials delayed issuing a mandatory quarantine for Americans who had returned from Wuhan in January 2020 and were being housed at March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County, the GAO concluded. As a result, one American ignored a voluntary quarantine request and nearly left the base, prompting Riverside County to issue an order to quarantine the person. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ultimately issued a federal quarantine order, but the two-day delay boosted the risk that COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus, would spread in the nearby community, GAO auditors said.
Citing last year’s failures, the GAO recommended that officials devise plans that focus on hypothetical rescue missions during a pandemic, and then test them in government-wide exercises to strengthen ties among agencies and identify areas of improvement.
The HHS said it agreed with the watchdog’s recommendations. The department declined to comment further.
The GAO report focuses on rescue operations that unfolded during several weeks and on multiple continents, with a recurring theme: Government officials butted heads as they were pressed into scenarios they had not rehearsed.
Auditors detailed repeated clashes among three HHS agencies — the CDC, the Administration for Children and Families, and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response — that contributed to disorderly efforts to receive the Wuhan evacuees in California, ensure there was sufficient protective equipment for government workers, and even decide who would lead the entire operation in January 2020.
The health agencies “operated independently of each other without coordinating their efforts at March Air Reserve Base,” the GAO concluded.
In one flash point, officials disputed whether the mission was an “evacuation and quarantine,” which would have fallen under the CDC’s authority, or a “repatriation,” which was the responsibility of the health department’s children and families division, better known as ACF.
The resulting confusion meant that health officials were still scrambling to make key decisions when hundreds of Wuhan returnees began arriving at March Air Reserve Base, GAO auditors determined.