With No Mask Rules, TSA Balances Security With Virus Risk

Getting screened at the airport by the Transportation Security Administration is not a socially distant experience. Your electronics and shoes go right into a plastic bin that ferried someone else’s through the X-ray machine just minutes before. You hand your ID to an officer sitting much closer than 6 feet away. And if something doesn’t look right, there’s the ultimate close contact with a stranger: the pat-down.

With airlines slowly restoring flights and more people navigating checkpoints, the federal agency responsible for the safety of the traveling public says it’s going to great lengths to make its screening process safer during the coronavirus pandemic. It’s spacing flyers apart in queues, reducing the number of “touch points” at the start of screening, putting up plastic barriers at bag-drop points, wiping down bins, and requiring screeners to wear masks.