Some Miami airport travelers will be asked to swab. What to know about the health check
Some travelers flying into Miami from other countries are being asked to do a nose swab to test for COVID variants and other contagious viruses as part of a nationwide effort to track new and emerging infectious diseases.
Voluntary nose-swabbing began Tuesday at Miami International Airport as part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s traveler-based genomic surveillance program. Seven other major airports have the program, including in New York, Boston and Los Angeles. Nose-swabbing is also coming to Chicago O’Hare International Airport.
How nose swabbing works at Miami airport
Sticking a swab up your nose at MIA will be voluntary, anonymous and free, according to the CDC. People who participate will also answer a short survey that includes demographic and travel-related questions, including age, information on travel destinations, and the reason for traveling.
You must be at least 18 for the swabbing and survey. And yes, there is a prize.
Travelers will see signs, a table and staff promoting the testing as they are exiting Customs in Terminal D. The CDC says the swab and survey will take about two to five minutes to complete. At the moment, the CDC will be testing MIA travelers for COVID, but will eventually expand the testing to include flu and RSV.
But don’t confuse this with the Miami airport COVID-testing sites travelers frequented during the pandemic. Travelers who agree to the nasal-swabbing won’t be told their results, according to the Associated Press. However, they will get a free COVID at-home test kit.
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The program’s goal is to help public health officials get a better grip on what germs are coming into the U.S. so they can make more informed public health decisions and be better prepared for potential outbreaks, according to the CDC.
And while Miami’s surveillance has just begun, the CDC says the program’s soft launch has been “very well received by passengers and employee personnel” and that it expects to expand its collection capabilities in the coming weeks.
So far, samples from the program, which launched in September 2021 during the COVID pandemic and is now being expanded to Miami, have come from more than 475,000 travelers coming off flights from more than 135 countries, according to the Associated Press.
“Travelers are an important population to consider when tracking new and emerging infectious diseases because they move from place to place quickly and can spread pathogens across borders,” state’s the CDC’s website.
CDC to nose swab some travelers at MIA
The federal public health agency said its travel-based program is like an “early detection system” for the country. The CDC says the program helped it “detect multiple Omicron variants up to 6 weeks before they were reported elsewhere in the United States.”
The CDC told the Miami Herald in an email that it decided to expand the program into MIA, which sees more than 21 million travelers a year, to help gather more data from travelers coming from “the Southern Hemisphere, in particular Central and South America.”
Some airports, like Miami, will conduct just nose-swabbing. Other airports, including John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, are also sampling wastewater data from airplanes.
Besides Miami, other airports in the CDC’s program include Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA), San Francisco International Airport (SFO), Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Boston Logan International Airport (BOS), John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR), and Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD). Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD) will start nose-swabbing soon.
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