Ebola Screening At Airports To Be Scaled

SCREENING for Ebola at UK airports is being scaled back as the risk from the outbreak declines.

PUBLIC Health England (PHE) said on-site screening teams will continue to be based at Heathrow and Gatwick airports, where more than 90 per cent of people from the affected countries arrive.
But Birmingham and Manchester airports and St Pancras Eurostar terminal in London will switch to the arrangements already in place at all other ports of entry to the UK, in which passengers from affected countries self refer. "PHE will continue to screen and subsequently monitor high-risk returning workers until all three affected countries are jointly confirmed free of community transmission,"PHE's director for health protection, Professor Paul Cosford, said. "The risk of Ebola transmission to the UK from west Africa is now significantly lower than when the screening arrangements were originally implemented in October 2014. PHE said over the past year it has screened 9785 people at UK borders, tested 257 people for Ebola and monitored 610 individuals who have returned from west Africa, where the disease has killed more than 11,000 people. There were 22 confirmed cases of the virus in Guinea and four in Sierra Leone in the week to July 19, according to figures from the World Health Organisation (WHO). Liberia reported no new cases.