U.S. Airports Don’t Get Coronavirus Screening Right
One day, there was no screening at all. A few days later, a chaotic process created a different risk.
An LA story.
Photographer: Kyle Grillot/BloombergI was stunned this weekend by the pictures of international passengers packed tightly in long arrival lines at U.S. airports. Despite months of warnings that the coronavirus was coming, the airports were woefully unprepared to screen international arrivals for health risks. The lines are the clearest symbol yet of this failure. But, in a grim irony, so too was the lack of lines when I arrived Wednesday in California. In that very recent past, flying into the U.S. was like entering a parallel universe in which Covid-19 didn't exist.
I arrived on American Airlines Flight 26 from Tokyo to Los Angeles with my wife and young son. While we were in the air the World Health Organization had announced that the novel coronavirus was now a pandemic. It’d been a very difficult decision to travel: Friends and family in Malaysia kept asking, “Are you sure you want to get on a plane?” As I scanned the gate area for what I expected would be a battery of tests and screening, I felt that we’d made a serious mistake.