Beefed-up security measures aimed at stopping the spread of the Ebola virus begin Saturday at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, with screeners checking the temperature of travelers arriving from West Africa.
The program will be expanded over the next few days to Newark Liberty, Washington Dulles, Chicago O’Hare and Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson airports.
Public health workers at JFK will use no-touch thermometers, and travelers with fevers will be interviewed to determine if they’ve been in contact with someone infected with Ebola. Quarantine areas have been established at each of the five airports.
Customs officials say about 150 people travel daily from or through Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea to the United States — West African countries hit by the Ebola crisis — and nearly 95 percent of them land first at one of the five airports, the Associated Press reports.
Ebola has so far killed more than 4,000 people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., lifted his hold Friday on $750 million in funding for a military mission to help combat Ebola in West Africa.
A Republican congressman called earlier in October for President Obama to institute an “Ebola czar” to coordinate the effort against the virus.
