Quarantines

Chinese authorities tracked down Westwood resident Mike Su recently at a networking banquet in Beijing. They forced him to pack his bags, then whisked him away to a budget hotel on the edge of the city where they detained him for a week. Su's crime? On his flight from Los Angeles, the website director had the misfortune of sitting near someone who had allegedly contracted the H1N1 flu. "I felt like I was going to prison," said Su, 33.

His legs shackled and his wrists in handcuffs, Robert Daniels craned his neck past the armed Maricopa County sheriff's deputy and gazed at a sliver of daylight spilling through the hospital doors. "That's the first time I've seen sunlight in ... " Daniels' voice trailed off. He couldn't remember the last time. The 27-year-old has been confined to a sealed room in the Maricopa County Medical Center's jail ward since August.

A man infected with an extremely dangerous strain of tuberculosis was waved into the United States at a border crossing even after a routine check of his passport set off an urgent warning, authorities said Thursday.

A man whose transatlantic journey may have exposed dozens of airline passengers to a virulent, drug-resistant tuberculosis strain had his disease diagnosed in part through the work of a doctor who is now his father-in-law, a TB expert with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, officials said Friday. Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, director of the CDC, said Dr. Bob Cooksey had helped with the bacteriological test.

Laboratory tests of a patient isolated in Denver with a highly drug-resistant form of tuberculosis have found no signs so far of the bacteria in his sputum, an indicator that the chances he could have spread the disease are very low, National Jewish Medical and Research Center said Tuesday. The three consecutive negative results are the first step toward loosening restrictions on the patient, who has been confined to a hospital room by public health orders.

The globe-trotting groom with a highly dangerous strain of tuberculosis whose travels last month caused an international health scare told a Senate panel Wednesday that he had no idea he was contagious. "I don't want this, and I wouldn't have wanted to give it to someone else," said Andrew Speaker, a 31-year-old Atlanta lawyer now in quarantine at a Denver hospital. "CDC knew that I had this," he said, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Quarantines on barns at Pimlico Race Course could start to be lifted next week, a state veterinarian said Friday. An outbreak of equine herpes prompted the quarantine at Pimlico, where three horses have been euthanized, and led several states to ban the shipment of horses into or from Maryland. Since the new year, 11 horses at Pimlico have tested positive for the virus. Besides the three euthanized horses, eight horses are currently in isolation.

Authorities quarantined a train in Ontario after a woman died and several others reported being ill. But a doctor later ruled out a serious infectious disease. Dr. David Williams, Ontario's chief medical officer, said that an elderly woman who died on the train did not have an infectious disease. A passenger who was airlifted to a hospital and five others had unrelated minor illnesses, Williams said. The train, carrying 269 passengers and 30 crew members, was held in the station in the town of Foleyet, 500 miles northwest of Toronto.

State agricultural officials Wednesday ended a quarantine on the Oriental fruit fly in a 116-square-mile area centered in Santa Ana that went into effect in July. Department of Food and Agriculture Secretary A.G. Kawamura said the insects had been eradicated. The quarantine was declared July 13 after area authorities found fruit flies, which can ruin some 230 varieties of produce by filling them with their eggs.

State agricultural officials Wednesday ended a quarantine on the Oriental fruit fly in a 116-square-mile area centered in Santa Ana that went into effect in July. Department of Food and Agriculture Secretary A.G. Kawamura said the insects had been eradicated.