Via The Washington Post: Officials fighting U.S. measles outbreaks threaten to use rare air travel ban. Excerpt:
Health officials in five states have warned people believed to be infected with measles and planning to travel that they could prevent them from getting on planes.
All eight individuals agreed to cancel their flights after learning the officials could ask the federal government to place them on a Do Not Board List managed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Martin Cetron, director of the agency’s Division of Global Migration and Quarantine, which tracks disease outbreaks.
“The deterrent effect is huge,” he said.
CDC officials said the agency had been contacted about the individuals by health officials in New York, California, Illinois, Oklahoma and Washington.
The government’s travel ban authority often gets little discussion “because it is a politically charged and politically visible request,” said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health policy at Georgetown University.
Though less restrictive than isolation or quarantine, the public health measure “is seen as a government using its power over the people and the states, which is kind of toxic in America right now,” said Gostin. “There is nothing unethical or wrong about it. It’s just plain common sense that if you have an actively infectious individual, they should not get on an airplane.”
Health officials emphasize that vaccination is the best and most effective way to protect against measles, and that the majority of people with infectious, communicable diseases, like measles, listen to doctors’ advice not to travel.
Officials in Rockland County, N.Y. and New York City, the epicenter of measles outbreaks since last fall, say they have advised several infected individuals against traveling.
Earlier this spring, Rockland health officials, who have had 238 measles cases since last October, consulted with CDC about placing two infectious individuals on the list to prevent them from flying to Israel for the Passover holiday, a county spokesman said.
“It served as an effective deterrent,” said spokesman John Lyon. “They did not travel."
