U.S. Authorities Likely to Expand Travel Screening amid Coronavirus Outbreak

Caribbean News…
27 January 2020 9:20pm
screening passengers at US airports

The US government is considering expanding its travel and screening recommendations to try to slow the spread of the coronavirus within the next 24 hours, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

According to an article posted on the Financial Times, Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said the outbreak is “unfolding rapidly”, so the US is considering broadening screening at the border and changing its recommendations on where Americans should travel.

“We are imminently thinking about this decision. As you all know, there is lots of new information coming out of China in terms of what’s going on outside Wuhan. We are trying to take that all into account as quickly as we can,” she was quoted as saying in the Financial Times news report.

So far, the US has screened 2,400 people coming from Hubei province, where Wuhan is located, and is continuing to track passengers in transit who took indirect routes from the province, now that there are no longer direct flights.

The CDC is tracking 110 people who they suspect could have been exposed to the disease across 26 states but so far there are only five confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the US.

The public health department is working to distribute a new diagnostic test to healthcare providers, which will take a week or two.

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