Airport screening for viruses misses half of infected travelers but can be improved, says UCLA-led study

In the past decade, the H1N1 virus and Ebola are just two of the diseases whose spread was spurred by international airline travel. Screening passengers at airports, therefore, could be one key method for slowing the global spread of infectious diseases. And although a team lead by UCLA researchers has found that airport screening misses at least half of infected travelers, the scientists say that rate could be improved. Their research was published in eLife, a highly regarded open-access online science journal. The life scientists used a mathematical model to analyze screening for six viruses: the SARS coronavirus, the Ebola virus, the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, the Marburg virus, Influenza H1N1 and Influenza H7N9. “We found that for diseases with a long incubation period, such as Marburg and Ebola, taking passengers’ temperature to test for fever is particularly ineffective at the start of an epidemic but does pick up more cases as the epidemic stabilizes,” said Katelyn Gostic, a lead author of the study and a UCLA doctoral student in the laboratory of Professor James Lloyd-Smith. “With diseases such as swine flu, which take a shorter time to incubate, fever screening is the most effective method throughout an epidemic.” Depending on the circumstances, airport workers conduct screenings before passengers board their flights, when they land at their destinations, or both. The researchers write that although fever screening on arrival has been cri...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news