WASHINGTON, October 10 (RIA Novosti) - The United States will be implementing a more aggressive Ebola screening procedure of passengers coming from Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, starting as early as this weekend, said Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson.
"What we decided and announced we're going to be doing is more active, aggressive screening at the inbound – at the point you arrive," said Johnson at a Thursday conference at the Center for Strategic International Studies.
"Given the nature of the disease and given the public concern about the disease, about travel, we determined to enhance the screening we already have in place," he added.
Johnson announced that the enhanced screening measures will be in place "as early as this weekend."
The screenings will begin taking place at five main airports in the US, in New Jersey, New York, Washington, DC, Atlanta and Chicago. Passengers flying inbound from the three west African countries will have to fill out a form declaring whether they have symptoms of Ebola or had been in contact with someone affected by the virus, and contact information for the next 21 days. They will also be subjected to a non-contact temperature check.
"The facts are, from the three affected countries there's no direct flight to the United States," Johnson said. "And on average it's about 150 [passengers] a day that come from one of the three countries to any place in the United States... and 94 percent of them come in either to Newark, JFK, Dulles, Chicago, or Atlanta."
The new measures are coming about in response to concerns over the spread of Ebola into the United States. Already the highly fatal disease has claimed over 3,800 lives. The first ever diagnosed case of Ebola in the United States, Thomas Duncan, died on Wednesday in Dallas, Texas.
Johnson insisted that the virus is treatable and can be stopped. "We very definitely in this county have the capability to deal with the Ebola virus," he vowed.
