Ebola screening starts at New York´s JFK airport

Medical teams at New York´s JFK airport, armed with Ebola questionnaires and temperature guns, began screening travelers from three West African countries on Saturday as U.S. health authorities stepped up efforts to stop the spread of the virus.

John F. Kennedy Airport is the first of five U.S. airports to start enhanced screening of U.S.-bound travelers from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Those countries have seen most of the deaths from the outbreak, which has claimed more than 4,000 lives.

Nearly all passengers traveling to the United States from those countries arrive at JFK, Newark Liberty, Washington Dulles, Chicago O´Hare and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta. The new procedures will begin at the other four airports on Thursday.

Mohamed Dabo, a 22-year-old Indiana man who arrived at JFK from Guinea after a stopover in Paris, said he was surprised by the intensity of the screening."I don´t really know what was going on in there but it was kind of crazy," he said.

"I sat down there for two hours. "The screenings, which will affect only a tiny fraction of overall passengers arriving at JFK, are being conducted by the Department of Homeland Security´s Customs and Border Protection (CBP), under direction of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.