Top U.S. airports start Ebola screening

the Clinical Advisor take:

United States airports that handle the most travelers from West Africa will start screening passengers for Ebola symptoms this weekend, according to MedPage Today.

New York City’s JFK International Airport is the first domestic airport to put Ebola screening efforts into practice. “In the past year, JFK has received almost half of all travelers from the hot-zone nations of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea,” reported the CDC and the Department of Homeland Security, in a joint statement.

Other United States airports will start enforcing screening practices, too, the agencies added. Washington-Dulles, Chicago-O’Hare, Atlanta-Hartsfield, and Newark airports will begin new screening practices. These four airports, plus JFK International, transport nearly 94% of all passengers from Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

The airports will set up a screening section of each airport, where medical personal will observe passengers traveling from West Africa for signs of potential infection and conduct temperature checks with noncontact thermometers.

“Those with no red flags will be given health information on self-monitoring and asked to perform daily temperature checks on themselves and to provide contact information,” wrote John Gever of MedPage Today.

Both the CDC and the Department of Homeland Security have reported working with West African governments to enforce an exit screening on all outbound travelers. So far, 77 passengers were prohibited from boarding an airplane as a result of the screening methods already in place, but none were found to have Ebola.