Airline passengers bound for US cities may face additional screening to detect signs of Ebola, the White House announced on Monday, as it stepped up efforts to prevent the disease entering the country.
Officials are 'going to be working on protocols to do additional passenger screenings both at the source and here in the United States', President Obama told reporters after a briefing with his advisers.
Though no details were given on how extra airport screening will be carried out, it is possible it will build on existing measures to look for signs of fever in travellers, possibly using infrared cameras to detect abnormal body temperatures.
Obama insisted that this and other existing measures he discussed with officials following the recent case in Dallas meant there was little chance of a serious outbreak in the US.
'All of these things make me confident that here in the United States at least the chances of an outbreak, of an epidemic here are extraordinarily low.'
'Procedures are now in place to rapidly evaluate anybody who might be showing symptoms,' he added. 'We saw that with the response of the airplane in Newark and how several hospitals across the United States have been testing for possible cases. In recent months we've had thousands of travellers arriving here from west Africa, and so far only one case of Ebola's been diagnosed in the United States, and that's the patient in Dallas.'
However, he criticised other countries for not doing enough to stop the spread of the disease in Africa.
'We have not seen other countries step up as aggressively as we need them to,' he said, pledging to apply more 'pressure' on foreign governments to 'make sure that they are doing everything that they can to join us in this effort'.
from Google News http://#
via IFTTT
0 Response to "Obama considers extra airport screening for Ebola symptoms in passengers"
Posting Komentar