Passengers returning from overseas flights to Kennedy Airport will now have the opportunity to be tested for more than 30 pathogens, including flu and RSV, under the expansion of a 2021 pilot program announced Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The initiative, which will last several months, is part of the CDC’s Traveler-based Genomic Surveillance program. It builds off an earlier program that tested for COVID-19 variants, officials said.
“The expansion of the Traveler-based Genomic Surveillance program to flu, RSV and other pathogens is essential as we head into fall respiratory season,” said Dr. Cindy Friedman, chief of CDC’s Travelers’ Health Branch. “The TGS program, which began during the COVID-19 pandemic, acted as an early warning system to detect new and rare variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and will do the same for other respiratory viruses going forward.”
The participating airports include Kennedy Airport in Queens, Newark Liberty International Airport, San Francisco International Airport, Los Angeles International Airport, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Logan International Airport in Boston and Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C., officials said.
The Genomic Surveillance program, launched in the fall of 2021, helped identify one of the first known cases of the new BA.286 COVID variant in a traveler returning from Japan, the CDC said.
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