Chaos gripped major U.S. airports on Sunday as Americans returning from COVID-19-hit European countries overwhelmed authorities attempting to process the surge.
Frustrated passengers complained of hours-long lines, crowded and unsanitary conditions and general disarray in the system for screening people for symptoms of the virus. “Very close quarters,” Ann Lewis Schmidt told CNN , describing conditions at Chicago’s O'Hare International Airport (ORD). “So if we didn’t have the virus before, we have a great chance of getting it now!” Schmidt said.
U.S. airports have been hit with a flood of Americans, many of them students, since restrictions on travel from Europe ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump took effect at midnight Friday.
Ban now applies to U.K.
The United States on Saturday extended the ban on travel from Europe, South Korea and China to Britain and Ireland.
Only U.S. citizens and legal residents are being allowed in from those countries, and they are then supposed to self-quarantine for 14 days.
Similar conditions were reported at New York’s JFK Airport and in Dallas.
Chad Wolf, acting Homeland Security secretary, acknowledged the long lines in a tweet and said his department was trying to add screening capacity.
“It currently takes ~60 seconds for medical professionals to screen each passenger. We will be increasing capacity but the health and safety of the American public is first & foremost.”
The airport bottlenecks were the latest evidence of turbulence in the administration’s response to a pandemic that started in China in December and has since spread worldwide.
