This TSA officer has coronavirus symptoms. He can't get tested

Brian Shoup is a 62-year-old Transportation Security Administration officer in Knoxville, Tennessee. For the past four weeks, he's exhibited many of the symptoms of coronavirus, including fever, breathing difficulties and headaches.

His wife is also a TSA officer. Yet neither of them has been able to get a test. Shoup's case illustrates the difficulties of the coronavirus pandemic across the country: the risk to public-interfacing government employees to infection and the lack of access to testing.

More than three dozen TSA officers have tested positive for the coronavirus at airports across the country in the past month. Most are checkpoint or screening officers, while some are baggage screeners or canine handlers. Following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, they have isolated themselves and received medical treatment.

"When we have to pat somebody down, you can’t do it from six feet away," Shoup, a 17-year TSA veteran, told USA TODAY. "We’re pretty much out there and exposed."

Shoup has spent the past month fighting the symptoms of the coronavirus. Still, he was denied a test three times, first by his doctor and twice at the hospital, either because the test wasn't available or no one thought he qualified for one.

"I’d like to know if I have it or I don’t," he said.

Shoup said he began feeling ill upon returning from a conference of TSA officers in Las Vegas the last week of February. Shoup is the president of TSA Local 555, part of the American Federation of Government Employees, and he was one of about 200 attendees at the gathering of union presidents and board members.

TSA tally continues to climb: Dozens of TSA workers nationwide positive for coronavirus in past 2 weeks

They spent their days in training sessions, shaking hands and greeting each other, followed by evenings at the casinos, which have since closed on the orders of Nevada's governor.

Shoup said he sat next to a TSA officer who later tested positive for the coronavirus, but he can't say for sure if that's how he got exposed.

"Nobody knows," he said.

He visited his doctor, who tested Shoup for the flu, but not the coronavirus. The flu test came back negative. Shoup's doctor prescribed him antibiotics, a steroid, cough syrup and a note advising he be allowed medical leave for the rest of the week.

Shoup, who spent three days in bed with a fever, said, "I had the symptoms hard core."

The following week, Shoup said he went back to work at Knoxville's McGhee Tyson Airport. Later that week, the cough, fever and headache came back, and he wound up in the emergency room at Blount Memorial Hospital, which is close to the airport.

"It kicked back in pretty hard," he said. "I just wanted to get tested."

Shoup says the medical staff who treated him agreed that he had all the symptoms of coronavirus. Yet the hospital wouldn't administer a coronavirus test because he couldn't say with certainty he had come into direct contact with someone else who was positive.

On Wednesday, Shoup went back to the ER to see if he could get tested. The hospital directed him to a drive-up testing center at East Tennessee Medical Group, an outpatient facility in Alcoa, about 15 miles south of Knoxville.

The center, which only had 100 tests available, told Shoup his fever of 99.3℉ was not enough to qualify him for a test. According to the Tennessee Department of Public Health website, the state had run more than 16,000 tests as of Friday, with 1,203 people testing positive.

"The main thing is, if you’re not running a fever of 100.4℉, they’re not going to run a test," he said.

Shoup's 14-day quarantine period ended Friday, but he still has symptoms.

"I feel better than I did four weeks ago," he said. "I don’t feel as bad as I did, but I don’t feel good."

He's supposed to return to work on Monday, but thinks he'll get an extension.

"If I have to go back to work on Monday," he said, "they’re going to send me home anyway."

His wife, Kellie, a fellow TSA officer, has been self-quarantining since March 14. She does not have the same symptoms, though she did have a slight respiratory infection. Like her husband, she's not been able to get a test.

Initially, the agency pushed back on even allowing her to take leave without using her paid time off, Shroup said. "They had to run it up the chain to Washington."

Eventually, the agency reversed course, granting her 14 days of "weather and safety leave" that will not force her to use sick days. (According to a letter from TSA Administrator David Pekoske to House Homeland Security Committee chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), if an employee's condition worsens during that period or a doctor says they need more time, the agency will grant it.)

"The agency now is taking different precautions," he said. "The agency, as well as everybody else, was pretty much behind the 8-ball on this stuff."

A TSA spokeswoman wouldn't answer questions about Shoup's case, and instead referred USA TODAY to Pekoske's letter detailing how the agency was handling leave for employees who tested positive for the coronavirus or showed symptoms, as well as those who had potential exposure but showed no symptoms. He also noted that TSA employees are authorized, though not required, to use masks and respirators. They are required to use gloves, he wrote.

The agency is providing hand sanitizer to its employees who interface with the traveling public, Pekoske added.

A spokesperson for the Tennessee Department Health didn't respond to questions from USA TODAY.

Of the 1,203 cases diagnosed in Tennessee, 103 have required hospitalization and six have died, according to the state health department.

Nationwide, more than 100,000 people were infected as of Friday, and 1,544 had died, according to Johns Hopkins data.

"I don’t think people in the beginning took this as serious as they should have," Shoup said.