Thursday, May 31, 2007

CDC still has to answer questions about the XDR-TB case...

Have you heard about the guy, who, even though diagnosed with eXtensively Drug Resistant Tuberculosis, was travelling around Europe? He has been on various flights while in Europe. Two of them were in Greece: from Athens to Thira (Santorini) on 16.05 and from Mykonos to Athens on 21.05.

Even though the flights are listed by CDC report for this case, nobody seems to care about these flights because their time was less than one hour and the danger is considered small(?). Moreover, there is a big "hole" in the information provided by the CDC since, nobody has answered yet the question about how he moved from Santorini to Mykonos. CDC doesn't say anything about that in its report!!

There is no direct flight between the two Greek islands so he must have taken a boat... By boat, the trip from Santorini to Mykonos is at least 3 hours and can be even more depending on the type of the boat. So his move from Santorini to Mykonos has to be considered a threat to public health, without mentioning that nobody knows his whereabouts on the two islands.... It has to be reminded that this period the boats from Santorini to Mykonos are crowded with tourists, many of them Americans...

CDC hasn't announced the name of the patient yet...

The flights involved are:

12.05.2007 08:45 local time
Flight 385/8517 Air France/Delta from Atlanta to Paris

14.05.2007
07:35 local time
Flight 1232 Air France from Paris to Athens

16.05.2007 19:25 local time
Flight 560 Olympic Airlines from Athens to Santorini

21.05.2007 13:45 local time
Flight 655 Olympic Airlines from Mykonos to Athens

21.05.2007 17:30 local time
Flight 239 Olympic Airlines from Athens to Rome

24.05.2007 08:50 local time
Flight 727 Chech Airlines from Rome to Prague

24.05.2007 12:25 local time
Flight 0104 Chech Airlines from Prague to Montreal

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

To eida stis eidiseis...perase kai apo ta meri sas gia na pantreutei lene.... eixe kai fotografia tou.... elpizo na mhn epeses pano tou...:)

Klearchos said...

Ναι, zoaki... Το βρήκα το όνομα του... Δεν νομίζω να τον έχω πετύχει, πάντως... Σίγουρα δεν έχω βρεθεί σε κλειστό χώρο μαζί του...

Καλό βράδυ!!

Nowhere Girl said...

That is truly frightening that he had that time between flights in Greece that were unaccounted for. You bring up a good point about it, and none of the news reports here seem to realize it.

They just identified him here in the States, but so far he hasn't been charged with a crime, even though he snuck back into the US through Canada because he knew he had TB and that the authorities were looking for him. I hope he hasn't infected anyone.

Klearchos said...

Nowhere girl, thanks for your comment!! I think the American authorities were more curious to learn how he sneaked back to USA than how he left from there and what exactly he did in the countries he visited...

I think that the mean he used to go from Santorini island to Mykonos island is a parameter they didn't realized even that it exist... This period the boats in these two islands are crowded with tourists...