The screening guidelines will serve as a safety precaution to calm nervous travelers. Tighter Ebola screening on way

Passengers flying into the U.S. from Ebola hotspots will soon have to go through additional screening steps — including temperature checks and health questionnaires — when they arrive in the country.

Federal officials said they will announce the additional screening guidelines this week in a move that will serve as a safety precaution to calm nervous travelers — and a way to silence the growing chorus of lawmakers and outsiders calling for more administrative intervention.


“I can assure you that we will be taking additional steps, and we will be making those public in the coming days once we can work out the details,” said Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In addition to airplane passenger screening, the Coast Guard will also start screening cargo ship personnel coming from Ebola-infected countries who arrive at U.S. ports, according to an announcement from Sen. Chuck Schumer’s office.

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For inbound U.S. passengers coming from West Africa, the screening measures will most likely mirror the procedures they are subject to before boarding a departing flight: checks for a possible fever and a questionnaire to document any possible contact with Ebola patients.

“Those two are certainly ones we’re looking at very carefully,” Frieden said at a media briefing.

Still, some lawmakers and outside groups have said that the government needs to implement even tighter measures to ensure another Ebola-infected patient doesn’t land in the U.S. undetected.

“I think it needs to be more than that. It has to involve training and equipage,” said Peter Goelz, former managing director for the National Transportation Safety Board, echoing concerns made by flight attendant and service worker unions.

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Goelz said aside from thermometers and surveys, officials should also make sure people who are the most likely to get infected — flight attendants, cabin cleaners and wheelchair pushers — receive additional training and equipment. The Service Employees International Union will hold a training session for its members tomorrow.

Schumer spoke with Frieden by phone Tuesday and recommended additional precautions, including creating a temporary database of passengers flying to and from West Africa that could be shared with hospitals across the country.

The administration’s decision to beef up screening requirements for certain passengers coming into the U.S. represents an about-face from last week, when officials insisted the current screening measures in the U.S. and departing countries were effective and additional steps likely weren’t necessary.

Then on Monday, with an expanding group of lawmakers and others calling for an administrative response, President Barack Obama said officials would step up passenger screening for certain travelers, though he didn’t offer further details.

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“The ability of people who are infected who could carry that across borders is something that we have to take extremely seriously,” Obama said Monday after a briefing with top national security, homeland security and health officials.

Frieden stressed Tuesday that any new steps the government takes are an extra precaution, and he reiterated that current outbound screening procedures in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea are effective. Ebola is spread through direct contract with bodily fluids and is not an airborne disease. In addition, the U.S. Ebola patient was checked for a fever and did not show symptoms before boarding a flight from West Africa.

Over the past two months, screeners in those West African countries have checked about 36,000 travelers, most of whom weren’t traveling to the U.S. Out of those, 77 passengers had Ebola-like symptoms and weren’t allowed to travel, but so far, none have had Ebola, Frieden said.

“We want to ensure, and we will always ensure that the health of Americans is our top priority,” Frieden said. “We want to ensure that anything we do works and is workable.”

One thing that has been ruled out by the administration so far is any kind of travel ban for those African states. Officials have said that would hamper the ability of aid workers to get in and out of West Africa.

“If we do something that impedes our ability to stop the outbreak in West Africa, it could spread further there,” Frieden said. “We recognize that whatever we do, until the disease is controlled in Africa, we can’t get the risk to zero here.”