Some UK airports screening for Ebola

[Molotov]

What a turnaround. Apparently, it's more for political reasons so that we will at least feel that something is being done.

I'll post the BBC in a sec ...

BBC link m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29559444

At least something is being done, although I feel far, far too late. All that suffering in W.Africa ... the West should have been proactive months (or even years) ago.

I don't know whether to be relieved or further worried by this news.

Probably both, I suppose.

"... the West should have been more proactive months .... ago"

Here's a big MN thread from April, which I found interests reading now:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/2041796-Freaked-out-by-news-of-Ebola-outbreak

I think the airports thing is just to make us believe they are protecting us in some way. Not all people will react in the same way to this virus, it'll be proven to be giant waste of time and resources.

What a complete waste of time

This will not do anything to prevent the spread.
IMHO all travel from infected countries should be stopped

They should be screening people leaving the highly infected zones!!

I agree Mozz. It is perhaps an unpopular opinion (guessing), but there would be a strong chance of containing, monitoring and controlling it if it remained in one area.

Flump, I think border control in the affected countries are already doing this, but symptoms can take 3w to present.

That's not to say that I think foreign aid should be prevented from getting to Guinae, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Far from it. W.Africa needs everything right now. It's more that I think there should be a 21-day wait (or something along those lines according to symptom signs) before health/aid workers can return home.

Thanks also for the link.

I just don't understand why they didn't stop flights out of the affected countries weeks ago, or place limits on who could travel when. Genuinely don't know why. DP asked someone who works with those covering the crisis, they don't know either. Of course there are problems with doing so, but still.

I think screening is better than nothing but they will need to be bombard the media/general public so that people realise that this will not identify anyone in the 21 day incubation period.

Standards of BBC reporting have slipped, haven't they?

They've just said that passengers arriving at some airports will be 'tested' for Ebola. No they won't. They will have selective screening The most they can do is see if they are running a temperature (and there will be a heck of a lot of false positives in the colds and flu season) plus some questions about recent activities.

And of course, there are next to no direct flights, so how they will know who to screen is slightly beyond me. For I'm sure not eveyone uses the same transit routes.

I know they're screening people arriving here from certain countries, Sierra Leone for example, but if the icubation period is roughly 21 days couldn't someone have been in Sierra Leone two weeks ago then travelled to a country that isn't screening and then arrive here?

Would that person then be screened? Would they check to see if they've been in one of the known infected countries within the last month or will they slip under the radar?

And there only screening down South. No one's bothered about us Northerners! Charming.

This has to be a PR exercise, surely. Are they only screening flights directly from affected areas or all areas? What about anyone flying using a non-direct route, are they able to identify and screen them? What about all the travellers entering the country anywhere that isn't Gatwick, Heathrow or Eurostar.

That's before you get on to the fact that asymptomatic cases can pass the screening check and the vast majority who fail will probably have nothing more serious than the common cold.

Temporaryusername - I wonder if stopping flights out of infected countries would have caused internal hysteria and a possible mass exodus (flights aren't the only way out) thus spreading the disease further?

Oh no - no wonder they're not bothered about us Northerners. We can't spell: And they're only screening. . . . . Argh! Sorry.

Re North - Just watched Channel 4 News and they reported that the port in Hull that has many ships coming in from Africa isn't being screened. It really needs to be!

Our screening proposals are really half arsed.

It takes about a month to sail fom Africa doesn't it? Which is longer than the incubation period. So you don't need to screen, but you do have to rely on the crew declaring if they have sickness (or the deceased) on board.

Don't worry still it's not just the northerners, they're only screening a small section of the south-east.

TBF Heathrow and Gatwick are probably the busiest two airports ad where the majority, if not all the direct flights are going to be landing. But it is very half-arsed.

Well yes what if you do fail? Instant admission? That will cause a huge burden on local hospitals who will presumably need to treat it as Ebola until it's confirmed otherwise

You'd need to arrange some sort of quarantine.

You can't put them back on a plane, unacceptable risk to other passengers and crew. You can't let them go around unmonitored. It takes a couple of days to run an ebola test, doesn't it?

Well they'd need to be in hospital. And if the screening is as simple as a temp check then as smoke one else says a lot of people will fail

About 2-3days I think. Ethically you're not going to be able to quarantine people together either, so you'd need enough individual rooms/places to quarantine them. Otherwise it's a bit harsh on the people who just have a temperature rather than Ebola.

Just had a look at travel times for cargo ships and discovered that some cargo ships take passengers. This company for example.

They offer a 34 day round trip from the UK to Africa...
Copy and paste - "Tilbury to Senegal, Ivory Coast, Benin, Nigeria and Ghana. £1,855 for the 34-days round trip." If you were only going one way (West Africa back to the UK) you could do that within the incubation time.

Source - Telegraph travel.

That linked news article mentions a possible case in Macedonia, but the circumstances seem a bit odd.