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 WASHINGTON (AP) - The government is investigating how the globe-trotting tuberculosis patient drove into the country after his name was put on a watch list — and given to U.S. border guards.
The episode showed a major gap in the nation's system to keep the direst of diseases from crossing borders. That the Atlanta man and his wife were cleared by border agents who had been told to stop them is one in a series of missed opportunities to catch a patient seemingly determined to elude health officials.
Worried infection specialists say it shows how vulnerable the nation is, because of outdated quarantine laws and the speed of international travel, to killer germs carried by tourists. What if, they ask, the now-quarantined man had carried not hard-to-spread tuberculosis but something very contagious like the next super-flu?
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