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Coronavirus Screening Causes 7-Hour Waits in Crowded Lines at U.S. Airports Airports Reel as New Coronavirus Screening Goes into Effect
(about 7 hours later)
CHICAGO — There were cryptic and confusing announcements in midair. Long lines to clear Customs. And waits of as long as seven hours in crowds with other travelers. ATLANTA — After a night of chaos at many of the nation’s airports on Saturday, officials scrambled on Sunday, with some apparent success, to reduce lines that had left people jammed together for hours as they waited for new health screenings mandated for travelers from Europe in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
As the federal government rushed on Saturday to implement President Trump’s restrictions on travel from Europe, part of an effort to stop the spread of the coronavirus, chaos ensued at some of America’s biggest airports. At around 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, roughly 20 minutes after their plane from Paris landed in Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Joan Policastro and Tor Smitt were wheeling their bags to an airport shuttle. Their screening experience had gone very quickly, they said.
In Dallas, travelers posted photos on Twitter of long, winding lines in the airport. In New York, Customs agents in paper and plastic masks boarded a flight from Paris. And in Chicago, where travelers reported standing in line for hours, Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois tagged Mr. Trump in a series of angry tweets about the long waits, saying, “The federal government needs to get its s@#t together. NOW.” Ms. Policastro, a retired flight attendant, said that some people on the flight had their temperatures taken, with a device held to their foreheads, but it seemed to be a random selection.
“They gave us water and snacks but no updates on how long or what stages we had to go through,” said Gabrielle Osterman, a college student who missed her connecting flight in Chicago after a seven-hour wait to clear Customs. Ms. Osterman, who had traveled from Frankfurt via London, said officials asked about her symptoms and took her temperature before giving her a mask to wear. “They just told us, you know, to stay quarantined in our homes for 14 days and they gave us some papers to look at, to read up on what we’re supposed to do,” she said. “When we deplaned they randomly took temperatures of passengers.”
Paige Hardy, an American student who left behind her graduate studies in London because she feared a broader travel ban, said a series of confusing announcements in the air and upon landing in Dallas led to alarm on the plane late Saturday. She posted a video on Twitter of travelers being asked to raise their hands if they had been in mainland Europe. Because of the delay, she also missed her connecting flight. At O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, officials braced themselves for another long night as a result of the new rules created because of pandemic. But travelers landing from Europe on Sunday said they had experienced wait times of between 30 and 90 minutes.
“It truly felt like an apocalyptic scenario,” said Ms. Hardy, who left many of her belongings behind in England and was unsure if she would be able to return. “This wasn’t bad at all,” Pam Lucatorto of Elgin, Ill., said of the time it took her son, a junior at Indiana University, to get through the line at the airport after his study abroad program in France had been cut short.
The confusion at America’s international travel hubs came as concern spread about the coronavirus pandemic, which has now been identified in more than 2,700 people in the United States and has prompted Mr. Trump to declare a national emergency. Gov. Jay Pritzker of Illinois said the Trump administration had promised him it would double the number of federal staff members at the airport.
On Saturday, days after announcing restrictions on travel from mainland Europe, Mr. Trump said foreigners in the United Kingdom and Ireland would soon be barred from traveling to the United States. American citizens, legal permanent residents and their family members under the age of 21 who have visited the European countries in the past two weeks are allowed to return to the United States, but airlines will rebook their flights to one of 13 designated airports. Wait times as long as seven hours at O’Hare on Saturday night came in the wake of a new policy toward travelers returning from European countries, who went essentially from zero screening on Friday to “enhanced screening.”
Under the new screening rules, when travelers arrive at 13 designated airports they are to be interviewed by a Customs officer, who will also review the person’s travel history using a Homeland Security database. The officer will ask them about their current medical condition. If they don’t show symptoms, they will be asked to quarantine in their homes for 14 days. Depending on their symptoms and previous medical history, travelers could be subject to an additional screening by a medical professional at the airport. They could also be subject to a federal quarantine. John Cohen, a former acting under secretary for intelligence at the Department of Homeland Security during the Obama administration, said the hurried implementation of the screening posed health risks on Saturday night.
“It is critically important that before you announce that you are going to ramp up that type of screening, that you develop a plan and work out all the operational details,” he said. “People who were awaiting medical screening shouldn’t have been in the same area as people awaiting passport screening.” He added: “They may have potentially placed a significant number of inbound travelers at risk of being exposed. to the virus.”
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“At this time, we are working quickly with our partners to operationalize a plan which will outline where these travelers will be routed and what the screening process will be,” Marcus Hubbard, a spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said. Many travelers Saturday agreed.
The Department of Homeland Security referred an interview request about Saturday’s delays to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, whose officials did not immediately respond. Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of Homeland Security, said on Twitter that he was aware of the delays and was working to add staffing. “I found it a little ironic they had so many people waiting in the same area,” said Genevieve Couldwell, a doctoral student who lives in Salt Lake City and flew from London to New York on Sunday. “We went through this whole process only to be kept in a situation where there might have been more exposure.”
“I understand this is very stressful,” Mr. Wolf posted. “In these unprecedented times, we ask for your patience.” By Sunday afternoon, the new policy appeared to be operating more smoothly in many parts of the country. At Dulles International Airport in Virginia, travelers said they had breezed through the line.
At O’Hare, the process was clearly not working. Even local airport officials urged their federal counterparts to add staff. In fact, some passengers on Sunday said they were angry at what they said was not enough screening.
Muhammad Hamda, a 48-year-old Florida resident who had been visiting relatives in France, said it took him more than five hours to get through Customs in Chicago. He said airport workers provided water and snacks, but he was annoyed because the delay caused him to miss his connecting flight to Tampa. “They didn’t swab us, they didn’t take our temperatures, they didn’t do anything but ask us how we felt,” said Linda Cole, from Williamsburg, Virginia, who was returning from a vacation in Portugal via Heathrow.
“It’s a big mess,” Mr. Hamda said. “Now we have to spend the night at the airport until our flight home tomorrow morning.” Her friend, Carol Schrader, said one of the people on the flight had been in their hotel in Portugal, and had gotten sick, though it was not clear with what.
Tim Clancy, 20, landed in Chicago on Saturday evening after returning from a study abroad program in Greece. Mr. Clancy said he had been waiting in line for nearly three hours and still had a long way to go. He was surrounded by hundreds of other passengers also waiting to get their temperatures taken. “It was worthless,” she said. “It did nothing other than expose us.”
“I’m not sure what this is doing to curb any coronavirus,” Mr. Clancy said in a phone interview while he waited. “If anyone had it, it would spread to everyone around with so many people jammed in such close quarters.” Ms. Cole added: “They asked me if I’d been in contact with anyone who had the coronavirus. I said no, but I probably have now,” she said, a reference to their wait with other passengers to reach the screening tables.
Robert Chiarito reported from Chicago, Mitch Smith from Overland Park, Kan., and Mariel Padilla from Columbus, Ind. Andrea Salcedo contributed reporting from New York, and Zolan Kanno-Youngs from Washington. It is also possible that shorter waits on Sunday reflected planes being less full than those on Saturday, when many people had raced to leave Europe as soon as possible in the confusion set off by President Trump’s announcement of restrictions on travel from mainland Europe. At John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, a flight from Rome on Sunday that landed at 3:25 p.m. only carried about 30 passengers.
Bill Kennedy, a business consultant from Minnesota who spent two weeks in Paris, arrived at Kennedy Airport on Sunday evening and said he was pleasantly surprised how easy it was going through customs.
“From reading the news I was afraid it was going to be a nightmare,” Mr. Kennedy, 46, said. “It turned out to be super easy.” He said his flight had been perhaps only a third full.
New procedures for travelers from Europe were rolled out after weeks of what many international travelers described as worryingly lax controls at American airports. As late as last Monday, passengers returning from Italy reported no screenings and no information about self-quarantine, despite the fact that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has listed Italy as a “Level 3” country requiring self-quarantine since Feb. 28.
The new rules also ban travel for foreigners from Europe, similar to the restrictions that had been imposed on citizens from China. Foreigners who have visited any of the countries in the past two weeks are also prohibited from traveling to the United States.
Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan of Customs and Border Protection said in a statement Sunday that his agency “recognizes that the wait times experienced yesterday at some locations were unacceptable” and is “working around the clock” to remedy the situation.
Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, acknowledged that an “unacceptable” situation had unfolded at a “limited number” of airports. “We continue to surge personnel,” he said, adding that the average wait time was now 30 minutes.
Angry international travelers said U.S. officials appeared unprepared for the deluge of people who were newly required to undergo the new procedures, which had previously been reserved for people arriving from China, where the outbreak of the virus is believed to have originated.
“We were handed this unofficial-looking form, with no federal markings on it,” said Tracy Sefl, who waited in lines with her husband for more than four hours at O’Hare Airport on Saturday night, only to be told that they shouldn’t have been sent for an enhanced screening since they had not traveled through Europe. The most concerning thing about the long lines, she said, was the they felt like a “massive incubator for virus transmission.”
“There were easily a few thousand people crammed together in this space,” she said. “Elderly. Babies. It was just this free-for-all.”
The sense of chaos has been heightened by confusion over Mr. Trump’s address to the nation on Wednesday night. He indicated that travel from the Schengen visa-free zone in Europe would be cut off on Friday at midnight. In the wake of those remarks, a flood of Americans rushed to return home from Europe, including Katherine Bieger, a 43-year-old clinical psychologist from New York who had just landed in Poland to attend a memorial service. She bought a new ticket to get home before the Friday night deadline, and missing the memorial.
“It is amazing how the calculus changed from one day to the next,” she said. At Kennedy Airport on Thursday night, she said, she wasn’t asked a single question or given any recommendation that she quarantine. “Zero,” she said. “I never filled out a form. There were no temperatures taken, no instruction about anything, no mention of coronavirus.”
But three days later, airports across the United States began instituting the enhanced measures.
Under the new screening rules, when travelers arrive at the 13 designated airports, they are to be interviewed by a customs officer, who will also review the person’s travel history using a Homeland Security database. The officer will ask them about their current medical condition.
If they don’t show symptoms, they will be asked to quarantine in their homes for 14 days. Depending on their symptoms and previous medical history, travelers could be subject to additional screening by a medical professional at the airport. They could also be subject to a federal quarantine.
Only 17 people have been quarantined in airports since Feb. 2, according to a senior Homeland Security official. More than 30,000 have been asked to quarantine in their homes. There is no timetable on the current travel restrictions.
On Saturday, days after announcing the travel restrictions for mainland Europe, Mr. Trump said foreigners in the United Kingdom and Ireland also would soon be barred from traveling to the United States. Flights that depart those two countries after 11:59 p.m. on Monday will be subject to the same directives as other countries in Europe.
American citizens, legal permanent residents and their family members under the age of 21 who have visited the European countries in the past two weeks are allowed to return to the United States, but airlines will rebook their flights to one of 13 designated airports.
The confusion at America’s international travel hubs came as concern spread about the coronavirus pandemic, which has now been diagnosed in more than 2,800 people in the United States and has prompted Mr. Trump to declare a national emergency.
In Atlanta, Sonny Christopher, 28, a former zookeeper who flips houses in Nashville, had just arrived from Paris, and said that a C.D.C. official had boarded the flight and checked all the passengers’ temperatures and handed out information about what to do if they felt sick. “You have received this booklet of important health information because you traveled from the People’s Republic of China,” the informational packet read. “There is an ongoing outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in China.”
Gil Kerlikowske, former commissioner of Customs and Border Protection in the Obama administration, said the problem was that policy announcements were made from the White House before the people who charged with implementing them had developed a plan.
“It’s not so much a problem with the issuing of the orders or direction,” Mr. Kerlikowske said. “The problem is the execution and coordination.”
Richard Fausset reported from Atlanta, Farah Stockman from Boston and Zolan Kanno-Youngs from Washington. Sabrina Tavernise contributed reporting from Dulles, Va., Robert Chiarito from Chicago and Nate Schweber from New York.