Ladapo chides CDC for asking international travelers for nasal swabs at Miami airport

MIAMI – Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo Wednesday criticized a new CDC program asking international passengers at Miami International Airport for nasal swabs to test for COVID-19 and other infectious diseases.

Ladapo made his comment in response to a remark made by Florida Department Transportation Secretary Jared Perdue on X.

“I’m with you, Secretary Perdue. Florida got it right during the pandemic – yet @CDCgov still thinks its March 2020 at @iflymia,” Ladapo said. “This provides zero public health value to flyers in Miami-Dade.”

According to the CDC, the Traveler-based Genomic Surveillance Program, or TGS, operated at six airports before Tuesday, including Los Angeles and John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. Miami International Airport, along with Chicago O’Hare, have now been added.

“Miami and Chicago enable us to collect samples coming from areas of the world where global surveillance is not as strong as it used to be,” CDC’s Allison Walker said. “What we really need is a good view of what’s happening in the world so we’re prepared for the next thing.”

The program, created in 2021, has been credited with identifying coronavirus variants quicker than other systems. It also detects, along with COVID-19, respiratory viruses such as flu and RSV.

Specifically, CDC officials stated testing will provide more information about respiratory infections from places such as South America, Africa and Asia. Samples have already come from 475,000 passengers from more than 135 countries.

GinkoGo Bioworks and XWell, two companies paid by the CDC, conduct the program’s testing and sampling. Overall, TGS has an operating budget of $37 million.

Notably, volunteers will not be notified of their results. Instead, travelers are given a COVID-19 test kit to take home.