The main airports in the United States that still accept flights from Europe have fallen into chaos. Overcrowded terminals, long queues and missed flights are the reality experienced by thousands of Americans who returned to the U.S. after President Donald Trump suspended European travelers’ tickets for 30 days. There are already more than 3,000 infected and 61 people have died of covid-19 victims in the country.
Americans who want to enter the country now find themselves having to wait in long lines for their turn to be monitored by health professionals at the 13 airports that still accept flights from Europe. Monitoring is one of the restrictive measures put in place by the Trump Administration to try to prevent the coronavirus spread and passengers fear that the measure will promote contagion instead of fighting it, as it causes large crowds of people. Passengers, many of them elderly, one of the risk groups mentioned, are unable to maintain their social distance and airports are becoming increasingly overcrowded, as returnees are missing connecting flights to other American cities.
“Right now, hundreds of people arriving from various countries are blocked together on a single line waiting to be ‘monitored’,” passenger Tracy Sefl wrote on Twitter, waiting in one of several lines at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago . “The authorities will have to deal with the ramifications of the failure of this supposed system,” continued the American, referring to the “unnecessary exposure” to which passengers are being subjected.
The situation is similar to more than a thousand kilometers away, at Dallas International Airport in Texas. “We are all being led to the same queue, side by side. I’m less concerned about standing up during the hours I’m already there and more about being around people who may or may not have been exposed ”to the coronavirus”, he told the Washington Post Dorothy Lowe. He had been standing in line for three hours and did not know when he would pass through the control system.
Last Wednesday, Trump ordered the suspension of all European travel tickets to the United States for 30 days, effective as of Friday, and thousands of Americans abroad hurried home. The American President made an exception for the United Kingdom and Ireland, but this weekend included them on the list because the number of cases does not stop rising in these countries – 1372 cases in the United Kingdom and 139 in Ireland.
Liz Hoyer’s parents, a 46-year-old teacher in Texas, were two of the people who learned of Trump’s ban as soon as they landed in Germany. Not knowing what to do, they preferred to board the next flight back to the United States and did so, says the Washington Post. Upon landing, they were directed to long lines at O’Hare. “The last thing my mom told me in a message a few minutes ago is that they were safer in Germany than in this crowd,” Hoyer told the American newspaper. “I’m worried. They are relatively healthy, but they are in their 70s. I just wish they were not in the situation they are in ”.
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf acknowledged the flaws in the system and ensured that the Government is trying to increase passenger monitoring capacity to speed up the process of entering the United States. “It now takes 60 seconds for healthcare professionals to monitor each passenger. We are going to increase the capacity, but the health and safety of the Americans comes first, ”the official wrote on Twitter. One of the shortcomings pointed out is the lack of medical personnel at airports.
