Smallpox scare grounds flight at Sea-Tac Airport
12/07/2001
By Liza Javier, KING5.com
SEATTLE - Sea-Tac Airport officials quarantined a flight from Taipei, Taiwan, for 2 1/2 hours Friday after federal authorities received an anonymous tip that a passenger could have been carrying smallpox.
Officials said an anonymous tipster called U.S. Customs officials at JFK Airport in New York and named a person on the plane as either being contaminated with or carrying smallpox. The plane, EVA Flight 32 to Newark, New Jersey, with a scheduled stop in Seattle, was quarantined as a precaution and none of the plane’s 157 passengers or 14 crew members were allowed off.
After inspecting the passenger in question, a medical technician said he detected no symptoms of smallpox from the particular passenger or any other passengers on the plane. Authorities released the 152 passengers but plan to detain the suspected passenger for further questioning.
Health officials said that smallpox has an incubation period of 7-14 days, but is not contagious during that time. A Sea-Tac Airport spokesman said the person suspected to have smallpox had been quarantined in the first class area, and the rest of the passengers were being held elsewhere on the plane. Officials did not say if the passenger will be detained for further quarantine.
The incident proved a frightening one for some of those who were waiting to pick up passengers on the plane.
Larry Mounger was at the airport to pick up his son after a business trip to China. When he reached his son via cell phone, his son told him that passengers were being held on the plane, but did not know why.
"Nobody's saying anything. We're all wondering," Mounger said. Mounger said his wife and his son's wife were "frantic."
Since the September 11th attacks, authorities have been on the alert for possible acts of biological terrorism. The FBI is involved in the investigation and is trying to find out who made the threat and if there's any validity to it.
"We have had a number of these scares since September 11," said Deanna Zachrisson, a Sea-Tac Airport spokesperson. "They've been a regular occurence, but we are relieved that each and every one of these occurences has been a false alarm. We're hoping that this is the case this time."
A nationwide smallpox vaccination program was discontinued in 1972, and the disease was eradicated worldwide by 1980. Two smallpox virus samples remain - one in the United States and the other in Russia.
Concerns about security at the Russian lab have been exacerbated by the anthrax cases that followed the September terrorist attacks. Smallpox is contagious, and roughly 30 percent of those who contract it die. But the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently recommended no vaccinations be given unless an outbreak occurs.
KING5.com's Jim Klockow and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
|