‘Airport chief mishandled SARS suspect case’

Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) general manager Edgardo Manda allegedly mishandled the isolation of the passengers and crew of a flight where a male Korean passenger showed signs of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), according to immigration officials and concessionaires at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA).

The Korean man was later declared by health officials as free of the disease.

NAIA concessionaires said that Manda isolated the passengers and crew of Philippine Airlines (PAL) flight PR 416 to Busan, South Korea by bringing them all into the NAIA Terminal 1 Building.

The building has a centralized air-conditioning system that could easily spread the virus to other parts of the terminal, the concessionaires claimed.

They added that bringing the passengers and crew of flight PR 416 into the building could have infected all of them, and said the situation was handled in an "ignorant" way.

Manda had given the orders from his fourth-floor office and delegated the job of looking after the passengers and crew to NAIA action officer on duty Col. Jose Foronda.

NAIA public affairs manager Judith Dolot said it was initially suggested that the flight’s passengers and crew remain inside the plane. This plan, however, was seen as impractical because more people may possibly be infected in such a confined space.

To avoid a similar situation in the future, Dolot said the NAIA plans to assign a separate holding area in one of several buildings near the Manila Domestic Airport. Suspected SARS patients could be isolated and examined in this area prior to either being released or brought to the San Lazaro Hospital and the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM).

Dolot said a large tent, put up at the Nayong Pilipino to accommodate possible evacuees in the early days of the war between Iraq and the United States, could be another venue for isolating suspected SARS suspects.

The tent, however, has been dismantled without having sheltered any evacuees. Putting it up again would entail too much expense, Dolot said.

Flight PR 416 was set to go to Busan but returned to Manila shortly after takeoff when a male Korean passenger showed SARS-like symptoms, but health officials later said he did not have the disease.

"We’ve ruled out SARS," said Dr. Maria Consorcia Lim-Quizon, head of the National Epidemiology Center, citing blood examination showing the man had a bacterial rather than viral infection and a normal chest x-ray.