When Hong Kong was hit with severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, "increased border screening on entry and exit was not an effective way of identifying cases or preventing transmission," he said.
Pressed to tighten border screening for travelers potentially exposed to Ebola, federal health officials took more steps Wednesday to monitor people coming into the United States from the three West African countries at the center of the outbreak.
However, these findings may not be applicable to border screening.
The effect of border screening on the total delay D is quite modest, though sensitive to how screening is implemented.
To evaluate the use of ITIS in border screening for influenza, its performance in predicting both fever and also influenza infection is necessary.
Travel between these countries is predominantly via commercial air travel and/or rapid transport which could potentially be subject to border screening and other interventions.
Therefore our study provides an assessment of the best results that could be expected from the use of ITIS in border screening for influenza.
Hence, whilst the effect of border screening, particularly in conjunction with flight-based quarantining, on the daily probability of initiation is dramatic, its effect on the delay to initiation is much less pronounced (Figure 3C).
To this end, countries may consider introducing non-pharmaceutical interventions such as border screening, promoting early presentation of cases among arriving passengers, requiring the use of personal protective equipment during travels (e.g. the wearing of masks), and reducing traveler numbers.
Border screening, even with perfect sensitivity for detecting symptomatic cases, tends to increase D 1, the time to an epidemic being initiated, by a matter of days to weeks.
The additional delay from isolating individuals detected by border screening is merely a few days under most plausible scenarios, even if both departure and arrival screening is introduced and screening detects every symptomatic traveler.
