A federal health official said Thursday that Los Angeles International Airport won't quarantine passengers suspected of having deadly bird flu unless the disease starts being spread from person to person and threatens to become an epidemic.
The decision came out of a five-hour hour meeting between airline representatives and federal and state health officials to flesh out plans for dealing with the illness.
Officials said they would only consider quarantining plane passengers if the World Health Organization said the flu was being transferred by human contact.
"We would do no quarantining at this point," said Dr. William MacKenzie, medical director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quarantine station in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles International Airport is the nation's main arrival point for Asian air travelers, handling 26 flights and up to 10,000 passengers daily from the region.
At least 60 people have died from the illness worldwide since late 2003, and most human cases have been linked to contact with sick birds. Still, health officials have warned the virus could mutate into a form easily passed between humans.
The flu, which is passed by migrating waterfowl, has not reached the United States but has been spreading throughout Asia. It recently reached Turkey, Romania and Russia, prompting the European Union to announce plans for an exercise simulating a human flu pandemic.
Health officials in Los Angeles said they discussed a possible scenario if the disease is eventually passed from person to person.
In the exercise, a plane lands at LAX carrying five people from a flu-infected country who are coughing and showing other symptoms.
Dr. Robert Kim-Farley, director of Los Angeles County Communicable Disease and Prevention, said health officials would isolate the possibly infected passengers and test them at a local hospital.
Other passengers on the flight would be quarantined at the airport for 24 to 48 hours then spend up to 10 days somewhere else until doctors determine if they have been exposed to the bird flu, Kim-Farley said.
Shelters in Los Angeles such as those that housed Hurricane Katrina evacuees could handle at least a thousand quarantined passengers, he said.
A final plan will be ready next month, officials said.
This is cache, read story here