The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced yesterday that it will expand testing of international air travelers beyond COVID-19 to provide early detection of other respiratory viruses.
The Traveler-based Genomic Surveillance (TGS) program, which covers flights from more than 135 countries and has been implemented at seven airports nationwide, collects and analyzes nasal samples from arriving international travelers on a voluntary basis, along with aircraft wastewater samples, to test for and track new SARS-CoV-2 variants. The CDC said TGS recently provided early detection of the BA.2.86 variant in a traveler from Japan.