NEW YORK: The United States ratcheted up its safeguards against Ebola on Tuesday, requiring travellers from three countries at the center of an epidemic in West Africa to fly into one of five major airports conducting enhanced screening for the virus.
Restrictions on passengers whose trips originated in Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea were announced by the US Department of Homeland Security and due to go into effect on Wednesday. The precautions stop well short of the travel ban sought by some US lawmakers to prevent more Ebola cases in the United States.
Affected travellers will have their temperatures checked for signs of a fever that may indicate Ebola infection, among other protocols, at New York's John F. Kennedy, New Jersey's Newark, Washington Dulles, Atlanta, and Chicago's O'Hare international airports, officials said.
"We are working closely with the airlines to implement these restrictions with minimal travel disruption," Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said in a statement. "If not already handled by the airlines, the few impacted travellers should contact the airlines for rebooking, as needed."
Johnson said those airports account for about 94 percent of travellers flying to the United States from the three countries, noting that there are no direct, nonstop commercial flights from Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea to the United States.
"We currently have in place measures to identify and screen anyone at all land, sea and air ports of entry into the United States who we have reason to believe has been present in Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea in the preceding 21 days," Johnson said.
Washington-based trade group Airlines for America, or A4A, noted that under 150 people per day travel to the United States from those three countries and about 6 percent of them, some nine people daily, have been arriving at airports other than the five airports with enhanced Ebola screening.
The group's member airlines are "cooperating fully" with the US Customs and Border Protection agency to reroute that 6 percent of travellers to the five designated airports, A4A spokeswoman Jean Medina said.
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