Enhanced efforts by the US to halt the spread of the Ebola virus started at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport yesterday, where teams armed with thermal guns and questionnaires began to screen travelers from west African countries hit hardest by the outbreak, as Liberia reported that 41 UN staffers were under observation for the disease that has killed 4,033 people as of Wednesday, according to the WHO.
The UN’s Liberia peacekeeping mission has placed 41 staff members, including 20 military personnel, under “close medical observation’’ after an international member of its medical team was diagnosed with Ebola this week — the second mission member to test positive.
“This measure is precautionary and meant to ensure no possible further transmission of the disease,’’ the mission said in a statement on Friday. “None of the personnel who are contacts have shown any symptoms, but will be observed for the full 21-day possible incubation period.’’
The 41 workers were identified as having possibly come into contact with the member of the medical team, whose name and nationality have not been disclosed.
The patient tested positive on Monday and arrived in Germany on Thursday for treatment.
The first UN worker in Liberia to come down with Ebola died on Sept. 26.
JFK Airport is the first of five US airports to start enhanced screening of US-bound travelers from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, where most of the outbreak’s more than 4,000 deaths have occurred.
Nearly all of those traveling to the US from those countries arrive at JFK, Newark Liberty, Washington Dulles, Chicago O’Hare and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta airports. The new procedures are to begin at the other four airports next week.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the screening is one aspect of an overall strategy against Ebola.
However, even before authorities start checking passengers for fevers, critics questioned whether the screenings would prove effective at stopping infected travelers from entering the nation.
JFK is the US entry point for nearly half of the about 150 travelers who arrive daily from the three west African nations and those flights amount to about one-tenth of 1 percent of all international daily arrivals to the airport, McDonald said.
The US Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is to conduct the screenings under CDC direction, McDonald said.
Using FDA-approved infrared temperature guns, CBP staffers are to check for elevated temperatures among passengers whose journeys began or included a stop in one of the three countries.
However, US health authorities have never before used fever monitoring to screen travelers, said Lawrence Gostin, who teaches global health law at Georgetown Law School.
He added that monitoring did not work well when used in Canada and Asia during the SARS outbreak in 2002.
Fever monitoring “had virtually no effectiveness,” he said. “It is unlikely to keep us safe.”
Additional reporting by AFP AND AP
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