Officials: Flight’s TB risk ‘very low’

Chances viewed as slim even if passenger has disease

Maricopa County publichealth administrators are not concerned that a passenger who was escorted from a flight arriving from Austin over the weekend could have spread tuberculosis to anyone else on the plane, even if the man removed from the flight was carrying the potentially fatal disease, officials said Monday.

A man was removed from a US Airways plane upon its arrival at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport late Saturday afternoon after emergency workers and public-health officials in Arizona were alerted to his presence on a federal “do not board” list because he was potentially infected with tuberculosis.

The man had intended to board an international flight in Phoenix, officials said.

A team from the Maricopa County Department of Public Health interviewed the manand discussed his tuberculosis-testing options, which were limited because of the holiday weekend, said Dr. Rebecca Sunenshine, the county health depart- ment’s disease-control director. The man, who has not been identified, chose to go to an area hospital for further testing to expedite the process, Sunenshine said. Public-health officials are awaiting those results, which are expected within seven days.

But the 69 other passengers plus the crew members on the flight should not be concerned about contracting the illness from the suspected carrier, Sunenshine said, noting that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends tuberculosis testing for people on a plane with an infected person for eight hours or more.

The flight on Saturday took approximately two hours.

“If you were on that flight, individuals were at very, very low risk of contracting tuberculosis even if he has it,” Sunenshine said. “These individuals were not at risk of getting TB.”

The “do not board” letter that the passenger received on Saturday evening from Maricopa County health officials was the first formal notification the man had received that he was barred from flying, Sunenshine said, though there is some indication he had seen a doctor in Texas before departing.

“I don’t know whether he was surprised or not, but I know that he had not seen the letter,” she said. “He had been evaluated back in Austin by a pulmonologist, and his physician had contacted him and had let him know that there was concern that it might be TB.”

According to the CDC, tuberculosis is caused by bacteria that usually attack the lungs and can be fatal if not treated properly. The bacteria are put into the air when an infected person coughs, sneezes, speaks or sings.

There were nearly 10,000 cases of tuberculosis reported in the United States last year, including 211 in Arizona.

Privacy laws make it more difficult to verify the identities of everyone involved, but it was a physician associated with the passenger who first brought the issue to the attention of Texas public-health officials on Saturday morning, according to a CDC spokesman.

The CDC learned about the traveler at about 10 a.m. Saturday from Texas public-health officials, but no one knew where the man was, said Benjamin Haynes, the CDC spokesman. Federal officials learned of the man’s international flight plans about an hour later, Haynes said, but still had no information about his domestic itinerary.

At that point, state and federal health officials began going through the process to determine whether the man met the requirements to be included in the “do not board” list, Haynes said. Inclusion on the list requires that passengers be contagious with a serious disease, be non-compliant with publichealth recommendations and be at risk of traveling on a commercial flight or internationally.

Federal agencies first developed the list in 2007, and 314 people have been added since then because they have or could have a communicable disease that poses a risk to the traveling public, Haynes said.

Close to 80 percent of the people on the list were since removed, and many of those have either continued or sought treatment for their conditions.

“This is an outcome that we in public health welcome in making sure patients get the help they need and also protect travelers and communities from the spread of disease,” Haynes said.

There are currently 68 people on the “do not board” list.

Officials determined the man met the criteria and added him to the list shortly after 3 p.m., but by then, his plane was en route to Phoenix.

The Phoenix Fire Department unit stationed at Sky Harbor received a call about the passenger shortly before 5 p.m. Saturday and made the decision to bring the plane to the gate but not pull it up to the jetway, said Deputy Chief Chris Ketterer, a Phoenix fire official.

Firefighters escorted the man off the plane to a room near the runway, where he waited for Maricopa County health officials to interview him, and a firefighter informed the other passengers that the man could have a serious medical condition, Ketterer said.

That information caused some alarm among the other passengers, but Ketterer said firefighters were acting on advice from a medical-control doctor who works with the department and out of an abundance of caution for others on the flight.

The chances of anyone on the flight contracting the disease if the passenger is infected are minimal, Sunenshine said, particularly because tests have not confirmed the presence of tuberculosis and the passenger was not coughing or behaving in a way that would transmit it.