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Screening for Ebola Begins at New York's JFK Airport

Anyone who refuses to undergo the checks can be held for up to three weeks in quarantine, or sent home if the person is not an American citizen.
Photo by Richard Drew/AP

Screening for Ebola at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport (JFK) began Saturday, just days after the first case of the hemorrhagic fever was diagnosed in the US.

Customs and health officials over the weekend started testing the temperatures on all passengers arriving in New York from Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, the three West African countries hardest hit by the deadly Ebola outbreak. Roughly 150 passengers fly to the US indirectly from the three countries every day, according to customs officials.

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Exit screenings in those countries are already being conducted on 100 percent of outgoing travelers, according to Dr. Martin Cetron, head of global migration and quarantine for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

"No matter how many procedures are put into place, we can't get the risk to zero," Cetron said at a press conference at JFK.

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The new measures come days after 42-year-old Thomas Eric Duncan was diagnosed and died of Ebola in Dallas following a trip to Liberia last month.

While there are no direct air routes from Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone into America, Homeland Security officials can track the origin of passengers who pass through a third country such as Morocco, France, or Belgium, where airlines are still operating flights to the Ebola-affected countries, according to the Associated Press.

At least 95 percent of travelers from the West African countries land in one of five airports in the US, including JFK, according to authorities. The other four airports, New Jersey's Newark Liberty, Washington Dulles, Chicago O'Hare and Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson, will begin conducting their own Ebola screenings next week, the CDC said.

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Temperatures of entering travelers are taken via a no-touch thermometer that resembles the hand-held piece of a landline telephone. It gauges heat from a person's forehead, converts it to an electric signal, and then transmits the numbers to the handset screen for medics to read.

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If a passenger exhibits a higher-than-normal temperature, they can be taken to quarantine areas for interview, or to be checked for Ebola symptoms, the CDC said.

Anyone who refuses to undergo the checks can be held for up to three weeks in quarantine, or sent home if the person is not an American citizen. The location for longer-term quarantined passengers has not yet been announced.

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Authorities are aware that raised temperatures can be caused by any number of factors, including fever and cold. The stopgap measures are intended to stem the recent outbreak of Ebola, which has killed more than 4,000 people so far, but they may not be able to detect everyone carrying the virus, which has an incubation period of up to 21 days before patients exhibit any symptoms.

Ebola can only be contracted through direct contact with bodily fluids of infected people, after the patient begins showing symptoms.

Following the announcement of stepped-up airport screenings Wednesday, President Barack Obama said the "chance of an Ebola outbreak in the United States remains extremely low."

"These measures are really just belt-and-suspenders — it's an added layer of protection on top of the procedures already in place at several airports," he said in a conference call to state and local officials.

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