USA (Opinion) — Yesterday came the report that India will join a growing number of countries installing IR Thermal Cameras at airports to screen for possible flu carriers.

We reported earlier about Thermal Camera installations in Australia, Bulgaria, Korea, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

(You can bet your bippie that the ones in China, Japan, Singapore and others have been trotted out, dusted off and placed back in service, if they were ever out-of-service)

Why doesn’t the USA have a similar policy? Is anything being done about it except diverting a few aircraft for one or two ill passengers? We haven’t heard or seen any reports and there’s precious little about efforts to thwart flu spreading from passengers arriving from Mexico

Yet while US authorities were apparently ignoring the airport screening issue, the big news yesterday was school children need no longer stay home for fear of H1N1 flu.
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Scanning Passengers for Swine Flu

While the Australian news reports:“Swine flu detection scanners ‘not perfect’”, in the same online report today they said:

“Scanners have been rolled out across international airports in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Cairns, Adelaide, Perth and Darwin, to help authorities ramp up their defences against the disease.”

It was also claimed that while scanners had been in use for about 36 hours fewer than 100 had been detected, and five of those were swabbed for testing.

“Three of those were asked to keep themselves in isolation at home.”

From Turkey comes the article yesterday (30.04.2009) entitled:
Thermal camera placed at Istanbul airport to prevent swine flu

ANKARA, April 29 (Xinhua) — A thermal camera was placed at Ataturk international airport Turkish largest city of Istanbul to measure the body heat of passengers entering Turkey, local press reported Wednesday.

Similarly the online ArabianBusiness.com website said on Wednesday:
Saudi installs thermal cameras at airports

Saudi Arabia has announced plans to install thermal imaging cameras at all airports to try and identify anyone entering the country who may be infected with swine flu.

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