The government plans to more than triple the number of quarantine stations at airports around the country and hire scores of health officers as part of a broad plan to try to stop deadly infectious diseases from entering the United States.
Ten new stations, at airports stretching from Alaska to Puerto Rico, are already open or nearing completion, and about 50 new health officers are undergoing training. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plans to build an additional seven stations as soon as it can get the money. Eight stations that have existed for years are gaining staff, so that when the plan is complete, the country will be blanketed by a network of 25 centers designed as a first-line of defense against a global disease pandemic. [...] If a global pandemic looms, though, the plan calls for the centers to play a key role in setting up a firebreak that would try to keep the disease out of the United States. The stations would help coordinate broad programs under which thousands of air travelers might be subject to medical evaluation, or offered medical pamphlets and advice, before being allowed to enter the country. Federal experts emphasized that passengers would be quarantined only if there is strong reason to suspect they have been exposed to a serious disease, and then only long enough rule out that possibility or get them into medical-isolation wards at hospitals.
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