Why aren’t agents taking temperatures at airports?
Some wonder why customs officers not screening passengers for virus symptoms
It may be one of the biggest unanswered questions surrounding Canada’s COVID-19 screening strategy: Why aren’t customs agents taking the temperatures of people arriving at airports?
On Monday, Longueuil retiree Jon Plens landed at Pierre Elliott Trudeau airport and said he was stunned to discover that neither the customs agents nor Montreal public health officials took his temperature.
Three weeks ago, when he arrived in Barbados for a vacation, he recalled that soldiers took his temperature in the small Caribbean nation that has yet to report a single COVID -19 case.
“It’s alarming because I totally expected that they would have some capacity to take our temperatures in Montreal,” the 61-year-old Plens said Tuesday.
“My God, what century are we living in here in Canada? I can’t believe we haven’t advanced and prepared ourselves for something of this nature.”
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) is categorical about the necessity to take temperatures at airports in the context of the COVID -19 pandemic.
“Airport staff should be equipped with calibrated, non-contact infrared thermometers to detect all passengers who have a fever, register the personal information of the febrile passengers, notify the airport emergency rescue department to quarantine, and report to the local health authority,” IATA states on its website.
Customs agents at airports in China, South Korea, India and Russia are routinely taking people’s temperatures.
In China, security guards also do so outside supermarkets and pharmacies. But some countries like Germany have taken a strong stand against it.
On Monday, Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante and the city’s chief public health officer announced that teams would show up at the airport in Dorval to insist to arriving air travellers that they self-quarantine for 14 days, the length of time it takes for people who contract the novel coronavirus to develop the flu-like symptoms of COVID -19.
The city was taking the initiative after Plante criticized the federal government for not doing enough to screen arriving passengers at the airport.
Dr. Mylène Drouin, director of the Montreal Public Health Department, urged those who self-isolate not to go out and buy groceries, but to ask a friend or relative to do so on their behalf. Drouin said public-health staff planned to give thermometers to people prior to their self-quarantine so they can take their temperatures twice at day at home.
Asked whether her staff would be taking temperatures at the airport, Drouin responded: “All the travellers that have symptoms are intercepted by the quarantine agents, and they have a test. But other travellers are asymptomatic, so we do not need to have a test, and we don’t have the capacity to test them right now.
“So this is not the strategy to take temperatures at the airport,” Drouin added. “It’s not a strategy that we’re looking at right now.”
On Tuesday, a spokesperson for the Canada Border Services Agency referred all questions about airport temperature screening to the Public Health Agency of Canada. Still, spokesperson Rebecca Purdy noted that the CBSA has begun a series of “enhanced border measures,” some of which “will be finalized in the immediate future.”
Among those new measures: Any travellers found to be ill inflight will be met by CBSA officers at the gate, will be provided with a kit that includes a mask and instructions, and will be asked to wear the mask immediately. They will then be escorted through the airport to ensure they are kept away from other passengers.
A Public Health Agency of Canada official referred a reporter to Tuesday’s news conference by Dr. Theresa Tam and others regarding the latest developments of COVID-19. During that news conference, no one addressed the question of temperature screening.
One of the concerns about temperature screening, however, is that it can lead to false negatives, giving people who might be infected the false assurance that they are healthy. Such screening can also deliver false positives, possibly sending healthy people into areas with others who are ill and contagious.
Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease specialist at Toronto General Hospital, recommends against such temperature screening.
“A thermometer, if calibrated and if used appropriately, can detect a fever,” Bogoch acknowledged in an interview with the Washington Post on Saturday. “Great. We are all happy about that. But is it an effective method for screening people for COVID-19 infection? The answer is no.”
But Dr. Anne Gatignol, a microbiologist at Mcgill University who has studied virus-cell interactions, said she is in favour of temperature screening.
“I think that checking the temperature of passengers arriving at Trudeau-montreal airport would be a good idea in addition to giving them their quarantine instructions,” Gatignol said. “Passengers would be sensitized to the risk to the population if they have fever. Although most people do the twoweek quarantine at home, some may ignore the recommendation. This would help increase the proportion of people really doing the quarantine.”
To date, the number of COVID -19 cases in Quebec has risen from one on March 4 to 74 as of Tuesday afternoon, a period of 13 days. The number of screening tests has so far totalled more than 7,800 in the province.