Your new post is loading...
More than 100 staffers from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are being deployed to three US airports to check passengers arriving from Wuhan, China, for fever and other symptoms of a mysterious new virus that's killed two and infected dozens in China, the CDC announced Friday. It's a highly unusual step. The last time the CDC did routine passenger health screening was during the 2014 Ebola outbreak, according to Dr. Martin Cetron, director of the CDC's division of global migration and quarantine. "I've been here since 1996, and that's the only other time we've ever done this -- for Ebola," Cetron said.
The screenings at New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport will start tonight, and screenings at San Francisco International Airport and Los Angeles International Airport will begin Saturday. The CDC will look for symptoms such as coughing and difficulty breathing and check temperatures of each passenger with an infrared thermometer. The CDC took these steps after travelers from Wuhan recently arrived in Thailand and Japan infected with the new virus. There have been two cases in Thailand and one in Japan. "Considering global travel patterns, additional cases in other countries are likely," the World Health Organization stated in a press release Thursday.
Last year, more than 60,000 passengers flew into the United States from Wuhan, a city 700 miles south of Beijing. The vast majority flew into the three airports where the checks will take place, according to the CDC. January is the peak travel season from China to the United States because of the Chinese Lunar New Year, Cetron said. Cetron described the airport screenings as part of a set "proactive preparedness precautions." "We believe the current risk to this virus is low," Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said at a press conference on Friday. "For families sitting around the dinner table tonight, this is not something they need to worry about." At this point, it appears most people caught the virus directly from animals, and the infection does not spread very easily from person to person....
