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WASHINGTON (AP) - The government is investigating how a globe-trotting tuberculosis patient drove back into the country even after his name was put on a no-fly list provided to border guards. The failure exposed a major gap in a system that is supposed to keep the direst of diseases from crossing borders.
But the communications breakdown at a U.S.-Canada border crossing was only one of a series of missed opportunities to catch the Atlanta man and his wife who seemed determined to elude health officials.
And worried infection specialists say it shows how vulnerable the nation is, from outdated quarantine laws and the speed of international flight, to killer germs carried by travelers. 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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