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| Photo Andrew Garver |
US airports are in chaos after the introductions of new health screening procedures on arrivals from Europe. Trump's administration has imposed a ban on non-Americans travelling from the 26 European countries in the Schengen zone and the ban is set to be extended to the UK and Ireland from the early hours of Tuesday morning.
Passengers have reported excessively long queues and mass overcrowing in terminals as flights arrived forcing passengers to wait for hours, the longest recorded so far has been six hours and twenty minutes at Chicago's O'Hare airport.
Ruth Procopi a US citizen spoke to the BBC about the situation she experienced at O'Hare "I arrived from Heathrow at about 3:30pm yesterday. It was chaos. Nobody explained anything. - And I was one of the lucky ones - I had no checked bags to try to find and because I had not been to a Schengen country, I did not have to undergo additional screening (still not sure what that was), but I didn't find out until I got to the front of this line.
"We were told there was additional screening while on the plane, but no details. We were not told anything at any stage. It took me two hours to get through."
Another passenger Tim Clancy, explained how it seemed the US authorities were trying to encourage the spread of the virus by delaying everyone. "After being on a plane where everyone was tightly packed in it felt like they were encouraging the disease to spread rather than doing anything to curb it,"
"I felt there wasn't a lot of access to hand sanitiser or restrooms because you'd likely lose your place in the queue. I didn't see too many people coughing though." Clancy told the BBC he'd been in Greece studying and after queuing for a total of five hours, a nurse took his temperature before he was allowed to leave the airport.
Other passengers have been taking to social media to complain of the long delays in getting through the newly imposed screening at a limited number of US airports permitted to accept passengers from Europe.
.Right now at O’Hare airport in Chicago:— Terrence Daniels (Captain Planet) (@Terrence_STR) March 15, 2020
Thousands of people are waiting for hours due to “enhanced #CoronaVirus screening" procedures...
This is not good, Trump has literally created a perfect storm to transmit #COVID19. Don’t even know where to start with this one.#Chicago pic.twitter.com/fOUQZfqxX7
The UK's Foreign Office is advising against all but essential travel to the whole of the US.
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