US: With no mask rules, TSA balances security with virus risk

Getting screened at the airport by the TSA 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. But TSA is at heart a security agency, and there’s no substitute in its screenings for some person-to-person contact—even though that’s how the novel coronavirus spreads. The TSA’s roughly 50,000 agents, working in more than 400 airports, now have to balance security concerns with infection risks in the absence of any federal standards on mask-wearing or social distancing. The agency is also under pressure to screen passengers for symptoms of Covid-19, something in which it lacks expertise. Story has more.<br/>