US tests passengers for deadly Chinese virus at three airports

Bloomberg

Passengers flying into three of the busiest US airports from Wuhan, China, or via connecting flights were screened for a new virus that has sickened dozens in China and already spread in Southeast Asia.
US health and immigration officials started screening passengers on direct flights from Wuhan for symptoms such as coughs and fever at New York’s John F Kennedy (JFK) International Airport. Direct flights to San Francisco (SFO) International Airport, and connecting flights ending at Los Angeles (LAX) International Airport, were expected be added to the screening programme on Saturday.
There are expected to be about 5,000 passengers arriving in the next few weeks during the Chinese Lunar New Year, the peak travel time for the 60,000 people who come from Wuhan each year, said Martin Cetron, director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s division of global migration and quarantine. The agency has added 100 staff members at the three airports to help conduct the screening.
The agency is taking aggressive action after previous outbreaks of novel viruses from abroad, including severe acute respiratory syndrome, known as SARS, which emerged in 2003, and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, which appeared in 2012. The agency last screened airline passengers during the Ebola outbreak in western Africa from 2014 to 2016.
“We are concerned any time there is a new virus or a new pathogen emerging in a population that hasn’t seen it before,” said Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
“Because what it means is that the population doesn’t have any existing immunity and we don’t have any specific treatment or vaccines.”
With a rise in screening, Messonnier said it’s highly plausible that there will be at least one case in the US. Catching it early will help doctors and public health officials control any risk of it spreading, she said.