WASHINGTON (AP) – The government plans to begin taking the temperatures of travelers from West Africa arriving at five U.S. airports as part of a stepped-up response to the Ebola epidemic.
At the White House, spokesman Josh Earnest said an additional layer of screening would begin at New York’s JFK International and the international airports in Newark, Washington Dulles, Chicago and Atlanta. He did not give many details, but another official said separately that the new steps would include taking temperatures and would begin Saturday at JFK.
That official was not authorized to describe the change by name and spoke only on condition of anonymity.
Earnest said the five airports cover the destinations of 94 percent of the people who travel to the U.S. from the three heavily hit countries in West Africa – Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. He estimate that about 150 people would be checked a day under the new procedures.
A Liberian man with Ebola died Wednesday. He had come to Dallas in late September but did not display obvious signs of having the disease when he entered the U.S.