A plane from Nigeria landed at JFK Airport Thursday with a male passenger aboard who had died during the flight after a fit of vomiting — and CDC officials conducted a “cursory” exam before announcing there was no Ebola and turning the corpse over to Port Authority cops to remove, Rep. Peter King said on Thursday.
The
congressman was so alarmed by the incident — and by what he and
employees see as troubling Ebola vulnerabilities at JFK — that he fired
off a letter to the federal Department of Homeland Security demanding
more training and tougher protocols for handling possible cases there.
The
unnamed, 63-year-old passenger had boarded an Arik Air plane out of
Lagos, Nigeria, on Wednesday night, a federal law enforcement source
said.
During the
flight, the man had been vomiting in his seat, the source said. Some
time before the plane landed, he passed away. Flight crew contacted the
CDC, federal customs officials and Port Authority police, who all
boarded the plane at around 6 a.m. as about 145 worried passengers
remained on board, the source said.
“The door [to the terminal] was left open, which a lot of the first responders found alarming,” said the source.
“My understanding was that the passenger was vomiting in the seat,” King (R-LI) said.
“The CDC went on the plane, examined the dead body and said the person did not have Ebola,” King said.
“It was
what I was told a cursory examination. The Port Authority cops and
personnel from Customs and Border Protection were there, and they were
told there was no danger because the person did not have Ebola,” King
said.
“But their concern was, how could you tell
so quickly? And what adds to the concern is how wrong the CDC has been
over the past few weeks.
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