The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expanding how it tracks diseases among international travelers, just in time for the winter virus season.
This expanded testing, which has just started, will continue for three months as a pilot program designed to track winter respiratory diseases such as seasonal flu. The program will also screen wastewater from airplanes and airport terminals, adding population-level data to information from voluntary nasal swabs.
This program could catch potential health threats that might be “the next COVID,” says Sam Scarpino, an epidemiologist at Northeastern University in Boston. The new data may also inform public health guidance during outbreaks of seasonal viruses like the flu, he says.
Since fall 2021, the CDC’s Traveler-Based Genomic Surveillance program has tracked the global evolution of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, through voluntary nasal swab PCR testing at international airports. In August, the program picked up one of the first known cases anywhere of a new variant, BA.2.86, in a traveler returning from Japan. More than 360,000 travelers have participated in the testing as of September 2023.
2023-11-06 14:21:26
Original from www.sciencenews.org