Ebola screenings begin at NYC airport

A New York airport on Saturday became the first of four U.S. airports to begin advanced screening of passengers originating from Ebola-stricken nations.

New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport will take the temperature of people coming from Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea in West Africa – the hardest hit by the deadly Ebola virus. 

{mosads}Over the next week, Newark Liberty, Washington Dulles, Chicago O’Hare and Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta will also be using no-touch thermometers to try and detect passengers who have a fever, an early predictor of the disease.

Roughly 150 people travel to the United States from the three Ebola-afflicted countries each day, and government officials say that about 95 percent of them first land in one of those five airports. About 22 percent arrive in Washington. 

While there are no direct flights, security officials say they are able to track these passengers as they make connections around the world.

The first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, Thomas Duncan, died in Texas last week from the disease. He had recently been in Liberia – where he had helped carry a pregnant woman with Ebola – but was not diagnosed until after he had arrived in Dallas.

Airports will have an isolated space for those potentially afflicted, but screening efforts could become complicate, as having an elevated temperature is symptomatic of other illnesses or infections— such as the flu. 

Even if passengers from West Africa are not showing symptoms, they will be moved to a separated baggage check area, where they will fill out forms asking if they have been in contact with someone stricken with Ebola.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also been attempting to screen passengers departing the capitols of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Fatalities worldwide have risen to more than 4,000, mostly coming from those three countries. The disease is not airborne, and a person must touch some sort of bodily fluids from an infected person in order to be at risk.