LaShanda Palmer, 45, is anxious as she reviews documents, inspects luggage and pats down passengers at the Philadelphia International Airport, writes Ceylan Yeginsu for The New York Times.

Palmer is a senior agent with the Transportation Security Administration.

More than 6,000 T.S.A. employees have tested positive for the virus. Fourteen have died.

 In Philadelphia, 120 agents got ill, the most recent on Jan. 27.

Palmer developed coronavirus symptoms a few weeks into the pandemic. She stayed home rather than go to the hospital.

“Too many people were dying in the hospitals, so I refused,” Palmer recalled. “But then my symptoms got so bad at home that I thought I was going to die there”.

In the beginning, screening agents didn’t get personal protective equipment and worked overcrowded check points.

Now agents wear gloves, masks and eye protection if not behind an acrylic barrier.

Philadelphia Airport mandated masks for travelers in October.

It’s now a federal mandate.

The agency says its employees are getting infected outside work, not at the airport.

But Bobby Orozco Jr., a regional vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees, says that fact can’t be proven.

Read more about the coronavirus worries of TLA agents at The New York Times.