Chinese virus outbreak prompts extra checks at airports, fever scanners to be set up at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport
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Many countries are checking the temperatures of arriving airline passengers and adopting precautionary quarantine procedures in response to a new virus as cases have been reported in the USA, Thailand and South Korea.
In Italy, fever scanners will be set up at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport for Thursday’s next flight from Wuhan in China where a mysterious SARS-like virus which has killed at least six people was discovered, the health ministry said Tuesday.
Passengers from Wuhan will go into a health channel where their body temperatures will be measures by the scanners, the ministry said.
The scanners will be used for all future flights from the Chinese city.
Passengers will also have to fill out a form with their destination and route once they have landed.
Brendan Murphy, Australia’s chief medical officer, said biosecurity staff and state health officials in New South Wales are meeting flights from Wuhan and are distributing pamphlets printed in English and Chinese to all passengers. The pamphlets describe symptoms of infection and ask people to identify themselves if they are experiencing any.
The virus has also sickened nearly 400 people and killed nine in China. India, Nigeria, Japan and the United States are some of the countries where airport screening procedures were in place.
Passengers leaving for Wuhan, China, where the new coronavirus spread, wait at the Leonardo Da Vinci airport in Fiumicino, outside Rome, Italy, 21 January 2020. EPA-EFE/TELENEWS
The outbreak is believed to have originated in the city of Wuhan in central China. The Chinese government’s confirmation that the new virus can be transmitted between people heightened fears it could spread faster and more widely just as millions of Chinese planned to travel for the Lunar New Year holiday. So far, the U.S., South Korea, Japan and Thailand have confirmed additional cases. Widening public health measures are intended to prevent a repeat of the 2002-2003 outbreak of SARS, which started in China and killed nearly 800 people.
In his first public remarks on the illness, Chinese President Xi Jinping instructed government departments to promptly release information on the virus and deepen international cooperation.
When SARS began infecting people in southern China, the Chinese government initially tried to conceal the severity of the epidemic, which ended up killing nearly 800 people. The cover-up was exposed by a high-ranking physician.
Gabriel Leung, dean of medicine at the University of Hong Kong, said Chinese authorities have responded much more quickly this time.
