Traveller screening efforts likely to fail

Paris – Global screening efforts to prevent the rapid spread of coronavirus are likely to fail, according to new research warning that even best-case screenings of air travellers will miss more than half of infected people.

The novel coronavirus has infected more than 80 000 people worldwide since its emergence in central China last month.

Traveller screening using temperature monitors and questionnaires is a key response measure, yet the World Health Organisation (WHO) yesterday said for the first time the number of new cases outside mainland China exceeded those within it.

Researchers in the US and Britain in a study published in the journal eLife used computer models to predict the impact of screening, based on the latest data of how the coronavirus behaves and how long it takes for patients to show symptoms.

Building on similar work in 2015, they found that many cases would inevitably be missed and called for a re-think in how nations screen passengers.

“If someone doesn’t realise they have been exposed, and doesn’t yet show symptoms, then they are fundamentally undetectable,” Katelyn Gostic, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Chicago and lead author told AFP.

“We estimate that on average, screening will miss about two thirds of infected travellers.”

Gostic insisted these misses weren’t the result of human error, but rather an inevitable by-product of how the virus behaves.

The WHO says that the typical incubation period – the time between a patient contracting the virus and symptoms showing – is around 10-14 days. –