Officials from the Phuket Provincial Health Office (PPHO) were stationed at Phuket International Airport on Saturday to start scanning all passengers arriving on direct flights from Wuhan, PPHO Chief Thanit Sermkaew told The Phuket News.
The scanning of passengers began after the PPHO received an order from Bangkok, Chief Thanit said.
Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul inspected the screening measures at Suvarnabhumi airport yesterday. He said about 500 travellers arrived there from Wuhan every day, but health officials had yet to find anyone showing signs of pneumonia. (See story here.)
“We started temperature scans of arrivals from Wuhan this weekend. We have six officials – three from the PPHO and three Phuket Airport Health Control division scanning the arrivals, starting with a direct flight that arrived at 2am on Saturday (Jan 4),” Chief Thanit told The Phuket News.
Additional officers have been assigned to support the scan teams at the airport, Chief Thanit noted.
“Four extra health officers from Thalang Hospital have been assigned to support the team, and other hospitals are standing by to provide additional support,” he added.
However, at this stage, only passengers on direct flights from Wuhan to Phuket are being scanned for the virus, Chief Thanit confirmed.
“This is because there are a lot of Chinese tourists who arrive in Phuket every day,” he said.
Public Health Minister Anutin at Suvarnabhumi airport yesterday assured the public that disease surveillance measures were being implemented efficiently.
Visitors showing suspicious symptoms would immediately be taken to hospitals by ambulance and treated in isolated wards, he said.
‘Ground zero’
The move follows an outbreak of a mysterious viral pneumonia that has affected 59 people in Wuhan, which has become ground zero for the disease.
Chinese officials yesterday said the viral pneumonia was not the flu-like virus SARS that killed hundreds more than a decade ago.
The infection was first reported last week in Wuhan, a central Chinese city with a population of over 11 million – leading to online speculation about a resurgence of the highly contagious SARS virus.
“We have excluded several hypotheses, in particular the fact that it is a flu, an avian flu, an adenovirus, respiratory syndrome severe acute (SARS) or Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS),” the Wuhan health commission said.
Wuhan police last Wednesday (Jan 1) said they had punished eight people for “publishing or forwarding false information on the internet without verification”, reported AFP.
The health commission said that seven of the 59 patients are seriously ill but that none have died. All are being treated in quarantine.
The infection broke out between Dec 12 and 29, with some of the patients employed at a seafood market in the city that has since been closed for disinfection.
No obvious evidence of human-to-human transmission has been found so far, it added.
“The reported link to a wholesale fish and live animal market could indicate an exposure link to animals,” the World Health Organisation (WHO) said yesterday (Jan 5).
The symptoms reported in patients were mainly fever, with a few patients having difficulty in breathing and chest radiographs showing invasive lesions on both lungs.
“The symptoms reported among the patients are common to several respiratory diseases, and pneumonia is common in the winter season,” said the WHO, adding that the concentration of cases should be handled “prudently”.
It said it was against imposing any travel or trade restrictions on China.
SARS killed 349 people in mainland China and another 299 in Hong Kong in 2003.
The virus, which infected more than 8,000 people around the world, is believed to have originated in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, according to WHO.
WHO criticised China for under-reporting the number of cases following the outbreak.
China sacked its then health minister Zhang Wenkang for the poor handling of the crisis, several months after the first case was reported.
WHO announced that China was free of SARS in May 2004.