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White House Orders Stop to Enhanced COVID-19 Airport Screenings: Report

Flights from select high-risk countries were previously rerouted through 15 designated airports for increased health screening.

As of next Monday, the U.S. government will stop performing enhanced screening of passengers coming from high-risk COVID-19 countries, Yahoo News reports. Since March, incoming international flights from much of Europe, China, and other regions of the world have been funneled through 15 airports, where passengers were subjected to basic health screenings, including a temperature check, and told to fill out a symptom questionnaire and contact information for possible contact tracing. Yahoo News says the order to stop screening came from the White House, with the several agencies and contractors who have been involved working to meet the Sept. 14 deadline. These include the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Customs and Border Protection, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Dallas medical staffing contractor AMR.

Since no national plan for domestic COVID-19 airport screening has materialized, despite calls for one in late April and early May, the end of international prescreening also marks the potential end of any widespread federal effort to screen travelers for infection.