After president meets officials White House announces passengers on flights bound for US may face more screening

Airline passengers bound for US cities may face additional screening to detect signs of Ebola, the White House announced on Monday, as it stepped up efforts to prevent the disease entering the country.



Officials are “going to be working on protocols to do additional passenger screenings both at the source and here in the United States”, President Obama told reporters after a briefing with his advisers.



Though no details were given on how extra airport screening will be carried out, it is possible it will build on existing measures to look for signs of fever in travellers, possibly using infrared cameras to detect abnormal body temperatures.

Obama insisted that this and other existing measures he discussed with officials following the recent case in Dallas meant there was little chance of a serious outbreak in the US.

Ebola containment centres in the US. Photograph: Guardian

“All of these things make me confident that here in the United States at least the chances of an outbreak, of an epidemic here are extraordinarily low.”

“Procedures are now in place to rapidly evaluate anybody who might be showing symptoms,” he added. “We saw that with the response of the airplane in Newark and how several hospitals across the United States have been testing for possible cases. In recent months we’ve had thousands of travellers arriving here from west Africa, and so far only one case of Ebola’s been diagnosed in the United States, and that’s the patient in Dallas.”



However, he criticised other countries for not doing enough to stop the spread of the disease in Africa.

“We have not seen other countries step up as aggressively as we need them to,” he said, pledging to apply more “pressure” on foreign governments to “make sure that they are doing everything that they can to join us in this effort”.

Obama said another area he discussed with his advisers was how to warn US hospitals and clinics what to look out for, something the administration plans to discuss further with state governors and mayors.



“We don’t have a lot of margin for error,” said Obama. “The procedures and protocols that are put in place must be followed.”



A separate fact sheet issued by the White House describes how existing passenger screening protocols operate, including how customs officials are trained to visually spot “general overt signs of illnesses” and refer suspicious passengers to a secondary screening by public health officials wearing gloves and surgical masks.

Homeland security secretary Jeh Johnson has also issued a circular to airlines providing additional guidance on identifying passengers with Ebola.