Authorities Hunting 70-80 Passengers Who Sat Near TB Patient on Flights

May 30, 04:06 PM

Current Headlines: By HELEN BRANSWELL

TORONTO (CP) - Public health officials in the United States and Canada revealed Wednesday they are looking for roughly 70 to 80 people on two recent transatlantic flights who were seated in close proximity to a man infected with a rare and potentially deadly form of tuberculosis.

In Canada, officials are seeking anyone who sat in Row 12 - plus the two rows ahead and behind - of Czech Airline flight 0104 to Montreal from Prague on May 24.

Officials of the Public Health Agency of Canada have obtained the passenger manifest - the airline's official list of passengers - and are using it to try to trace the passengers to urge them to undergo testing for TB.

The man, an American citizen, flew to Europe on May 12, arriving in Paris on the morning of May 13, travelling against the advice of public health officials in the Atlanta, Ga., area who were in charge of his case. The man has extensively drug resistant tuberculosis or XDR-TB, a strain of the TB bacterium that does not respond to most of the drugs used to treat the disease.

The man was travelling to Europe to get married in Greece. He and his new wife then travelled to Italy to honeymoon.

In the course of their travels they took seven flights, though public health authorities believe only the two international flights were of long enough duration to pose a possible infection risk to passengers located near the man.

Authorities with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta reached the man in Rome on May 23 to urge him not to board any more commercial aircraft and to seek treatment in isolation until a way to safely return him to the United States could be found. But the man and his wife fled, flying to Prague where they boarded a flight to Montreal in the hopes they could slip into the United States from Canada.

After arriving in Montreal, they travelled by car to New York State, crossing at the Champlain, N.Y. border crossing.

The airline that transported the man from Prague issued a statement Wednesday saying it handed him over to local health authorities when the plane arrived in Montreal.

But officials of the Public Health Agency of Canada dispute the claim, saying there is no record the pilot notified quarantine services at Montreal's Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport that they should meet the plane when it arrived from Prague on May 24.

"Under the Quarantine Act, there is a requirement for advance notification, so the pilot, if he or she becomes aware of an ill passenger onboard, is required to report ahead and cause one of our quarantine officers in our quarantine program to be aware of the situation," said Dr. Howard Njoo, director-general of the Public Health Agency of Canada's centre of emergency preparedness and response.

"That did not happen in this case because we checked with our quarantine station in Montreal. There was no advance notification by the pilot of a situation of an ill passenger onboard."

A statement issued by Czech Airlines on Wednesday said the company learned five hours after Flight 0104 left the Czech capital that they had a passenger onboard who was believed to be infected with tuberculosis.

The airline said it notified both Canadian and U.S. health authorities and handed the man over to local health officials when the plane arrived in Montreal.

Officials of the airline were not immediately available to answer questions about the statement.

Njoo also disputed the airline's claim that it informed Canadian health authorities, saying the first Canadian officials learned of the incident was when they were informed of it by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control the day after the flight arrived, and after the man had slipped back into the United States.

Njoo said he checked with counterparts in Quebec and they too say they received no notification from the airline.

Public health authorities around the globe are extremely concerned about the rise of XDR-TB, a form of the disease that is fatal in roughly 50 per cent of regular cases and 90 per cent of cases where the person is also infected with HIV-AIDS.

The unidentified man, a U.S. citizen, denies the claims of U.S. authorities that he was told he should not travel to Europe earlier this month for a planned wedding and extended honeymoon.

He admitted in an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he flew back via Canada to evade a U.S. no-fly order that had been issued to prevent him from taking a long-haul flight.

Health officials in both countries are looking for people who sat in the same row as the man and in the two rows behind and in front of him, saying they should be tested for TB. They suggest others on the flights were probably at very low risk of infection.