Singapore screens passengers arriving from China after SARS scare

Asian Economic News, Jan 12, 2004

SINGAPORE, Jan. 6 Kyodo

Singapore has begun screening visitors arriving from southern China in response to the reemergence of SARS there, an airport official said Tuesday.

The city-state's Changi Airport began screening visitors arriving from Hong Kong on Tuesday with thermal scanners as a further precautionary step after introducing screening for visitors flying in from Guangzhou, capital of China's Guangdong Province, on Dec. 27.

China on Monday confirmed that a 32-year-old man in southern Guangdong had contracted SARS, after more than a week of uncertainty over conflicting SARS test results.

The airport recently deployed 10 more thermal scanners to screen those arriving from southern China, raising the total number of scanners being used at the airport to 30, spokeswoman Julia Jemangin said.

Singapore was one of the countries worst affected by the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) between March and May last year, in which 238 people were infected and 33 died.

The country was declared free of SARS by the World Health Organization at the end of May last year. SARS reemerged in September last year when one Singaporean microbiologist was infected with SARS while working in a government laboratory here, but that turned out to be an isolated case.

At the height of the SARS epidemic, Singapore had deployed thermal scanners to screen flights arriving from all countries, but since Aug. 1, after the threat of SARS had petered out, the airport had only screened visitors at the airport's immigration hall.

About 87 flights arrive from Hong Kong and 12 from Guangzhou each week.

China was Singapore's second biggest source of tourists after Indonesia for the first 11 months of last year, according to the latest statistics from the Singapore Tourism Board, which has been moving aggressively to woo more visitors from China by easing visa application requirements.