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Chinelo Obogo
The Federal Government of Nigeria yesterday announced it has installed equipment with remote sensors for assessing the health status of passengers arriving in the country through all international airports in the country.
With this new development, passengers on international flights will be made to compulsorily pass through immigration formalities which will further expose them to the remote assessment, done electronically and speedily without their noticing anything.
The Minister of Health, Dr Emmanuel Ehanire, made the disclosure at a press briefing with journalists in Abuja, on Monday. He said all passengers arriving the country through international flights will have their health status passively profiled and those with outstanding symptoms would be called aside for extra medical attention, while those with no issue will pass through the immigration gate unhindered.
Dr Ehanire said, the Ministry of Health through the airport health officers is working in collaboration with the Immigration Service, Customs, Airport managers, the Federal Airports Authority Of Nigeria, (FAAN), the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, NCAA, to ensure no passenger skips the passive screening and other strategic process installed at the airport and to accost anyone with symptoms that could graduate to COVID19 (novel Corona Virus) case in Nigeria.
Similarly, the minister hinted that more thermal screeners have been made available at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, MMIA, Lagos by FAAN.
This is just as the airport authority insists that all forms for arriving passengers must be correctly filled.
The manager at MMIA, Mrs. Victoria Shinaba, while speaking with reporters yesterday, said the thermal cameras have been increased to ensure every passenger is well screened and no one escapes the exercise.
She noted that using more cameras to capture the temperature of the passengers, will help to reduce long queues and attend to all the passengers faster.
Shinaba said the authority in collaboration with other concerned government agencies including the airlines, will ensure that forms given to passengers to fill their itinerary are correctly filled so that when there is a problem, they will know how to reach the passenger.
Meanwhile, two of the UK’s biggest airlines have announced the cancelationof hundreds more flight due to the coronavirus outbreak.
British Airways has called off more than 400 journeys while Ryanair is cutting its timetable by a quarter according to Evening Standard, a UK based publication.
Both airlines cite a significant “drop in demand” caused by the Covid-19 outbreak for the drastic move.
Airlines operating in the European Union are not required to pay compensation for flight cancellations if passengers are told at least 14 days before they were due to travel.
Most of BA’s cancellations were for short-haul flights between Heathrow and Italy, France, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Ireland and Switzerland.
