CDC expanding surveillance at 4 major US airports to look for Omicron

The US CDC is expanding surveillance at four major international airports to keep an eye out for the Omicron variant of coronavirus in travelers, the agency's director said Tuesday. Dr. Rochelle Walensky told a White House Covid-19 briefing that the CDC is expanding surveillance with XpresCheck, a testing service at airport terminals, to: Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport; John F. Kennedy International Airport; Newark Liberty International Airport and San Francisco International Airport. She noted they are four of the busiest international airports in the country. The Biden administration imposed new restrictions on travel from eight southern African countries, including South Africa, late last week. Omicron was first reported by South African health authorities. But Delta, with headquarters and major operations in Atlanta, said it plans to continue its Atlanta-Johannesburg flights. United Airlines also said it does not plan to scale back service between Newark and Johannesburg and will restart its route to Cape Town, also in South Africa, next week as planned. This new effort is actually an expansion of a biosurveillance program first launched in September that provided testing for travelers arriving from India at JFK, Newark and San Francisco, according to XpresSpa Group, the parent company of XpresCheck. "CDC is evaluating how to make international travel as safe as possible," Walensky said. That includes "critical partner testing closer to the time of flights and considerations around additional post-arrival testing and self-quarantine," she said.<br/>