CDC. Still unprepared to respond quickly to global travel threats, US audit says

According to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.

The report says the limits of how the C.D.C. collecting and managing the contact details of air travelers makes contact tracing and tracking public health risks difficult. The agency, the G.A.O. found, "is unable to quickly and accurately identify the number of passengers exposed to a specific infected passenger on a flight."

Two and a half after the coronavirus began to spread around the world, the G.A.O. said in a statement Tuesday that the pandemic "has underscored how unprepared the United States' public health and aviation systems are to respond to public health threats." a sense of urgency this summer as tourism and travel began to approach pre-pandemic levels, even as the Omicron subvariant known as BA.5 is fueling a rise in cases in many countries.

In the United States, reported cases have averaged about 100,000 per day - a figure that is likely to be underestimated given the recourse increasing home testing and mass testing site closures.

The C.D.C. did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. The G.A.O. noted some changes made by the agency, but said its data systems still needed "substantial improvement". He said the C.D.C. had "approved the recommendations" of its report, including that the agency revamp its data system or develop a new one.

U.S. authorities have made efforts to trace travelers who may have contracted Covid-19 abroad. For example, in late November, as Omicron cases spiked in southern Africa, officials ordered airlines to share contact information for passengers who flew from the region to the United States.

The C.D.C. was developed in the mid-2000s, the G.A.O. according to the report, and “was not designed for rapid assessment or aggregation of public health data on individual cases.” This hampered the agency, according to the report, meaning the C.D.C. "is unable to effectively analyze and disseminate data to inform public health policy and respond to disease threats." the SARS epidemic in the early 2000s.

“More than any other mode of transportation, air travel creates the possibility that infectious diseases move rapidly from place to place. one part of the world to another,” the report says.

The data system used by the C.D.C. triggered contact investigations of about 80 to 130 thefts each year from 2015 to 2019, and about 25,000 thefts in 2020, according to the report.