Ebola screenings at Heathrow to start Tuesday

Brussels - Travellers from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea arriving at London's Heathrow airport terminal 1 will be screened for Ebola symptoms from Tuesday (14 October) onwards, in an attempt to find those infected with the virus, which, according to the World Health Organisation, poses “the most severe, acute health emergency seen in modern times”.

Already 4,033 people have died as a result of the virus; 8,399 have been confirmed as infected, UK secretary of state for health Jeremy Hunt told the country's parliament on Monday.

Those who arrive from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea at terminal 1 will have to fill out a questionnaire and have their temperature taken. Similar screenings will commence later this week at other terminals at airports Heathrow and Gatwick, and to the Eurostar train station which connects Brussels to London.

In his address to MPs, Hunt acknowledged that “no screening and monitoring procedure can identify 100 people of people arriving from Ebola-affected countries”.

He said it is likely that “a handful of [Ebola] cases” in the UK is likely to appear “over the next three months.”

A British virologist raised doubts about the effectiveness of the measure in The Telegraph, however. He said that people who have the flu could be mistaken for Ebola cases.

“It would not surprise me if airport screening measures mainly caught unfortunate passengers with seasonal ailments who were unlucky enough to have recently been to Africa”, Ben Neuman was quoted as saying.

London is the first European capital to start screening for ebola at arrivals from affected countries. France announced on Monday that it will take extra measures.

Meanwhile, on Thursday (16 October), EU health ministers will discuss in Brussels whether member states should take additional measures.

At the same time, in a hospital in Brussels, a person who returned from Guinea earlier this month and contracted a high fever on Monday (13 October), has been put in quarantine.

“The patient possibly has Ebola, but the chance is higher that it will turn out to be malaria”, a spokesperson for the Belgian federal public service of health told Belgian media.

In Spain, a nurse who was diagnosed with Ebola last week, “is still in a very serious condition”, said a professor of preventive medicine and public health, speaking for the government.

Professor Fernando Rodriguez Artalejo also said the outbreak is under control, El Pais reports: “Right now there is no other person in Spain who is capable of transmitting the virus other than the patient … We are in a situation of total calm.”

Governments have good reason to quell panic.

Margaret Chan, who is the director-general of the World Health Organisation, said 90 percent of the economic damage from an Ebola outbreak “comes from irrational and disorganised efforts of the public to avoid infection.”

Outside of the most effected countries in West Africa, “fear of infection has spread around the world much faster than the virus [itself]”, Chan said, according to AP.