Written By: Shraddha Rupavate | Published : October 9, 2014 2:48 PM IST
Travellers from Ebola-affected nations will face enhanced screening at five major US airports, the government announced Wednesday, hours after a Liberian man who was the first person diagnosed with the deadly virus on American soil died at a Dallas hospital.
Passengers from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone will have their temperatures taken and must answer questions about their health and exposure history, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department of Homeland Security's Customs & Border Protection (CBP) said in a joint statement.
New York's JFK International Airport will begin the new screening Saturday, while Washington-Dulles, Newark, Chicago-O'Hare and Atlanta international airports will implement the new measures next week, Xinhua reported citing the statement.
By doing the enhanced entry screening at the five airports, the US can evaluate over 94 percent of travelers from Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, the three West African countries hardest hit by the epidemic, it said.
'We believe these new measures will further protect the health of Americans,' CDC Director Tom Frieden said, adding that "nothing we can do will get us to absolute zero risk until we end the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.'
Fever: Increase in body temperature is the first defence mechanism that the body uses to kill any foreign particle invading the body. When Ebola infects the body, it causes a release of various compounds like cytokines and histamines that pass on the signals of increasing body temperature. In fact, Ebola virus disease is also called the Ebola haemorrhagic fever, where the temperature can go above 38.6 C or 101.5 F.
Headache: It is the most common symptom of Ebola infection after fever, present in almost 96 percent of the cases. Nausea and headache along with fever present a typical case of common cold and flu. At this stage, the symptoms can be confused with other common infections.
Stomach pain: A few viral particles invade the liver and starts destroying the hepatocytes. New virions start damaging the intestinal cells causing abdominal pain.
Drop in blood pressure: The cytokines and histamines released by the immune cells, soon after the entry of the virus in the body, increases the permeability of the cells lining the blood vessels. This causes leakage of water from the blood into the surrounding tissues and a sudden drop in blood pressure.
With inputs from IANS
Photo source: Getty images
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