OPINION:
In 2014, when Ebola appeared to threaten the United States, calls for restricting travel, including limiting visas to possible travelers from infected areas, were fortunately never implemented. Now, with the surfacing of the coronavirus threat, the lessons we learned from the Ebola outbreak may be useful to reduce population risk.
In fall 2014, the Ebola virus raged throughout Western Africa, prompting movements for closing borders and barring travelers’ entry from that affected region into the United States. Mass hysteria ensued when cases inevitably appeared in the United States. The World Health Organization (WHO) eventually deemed entry screening as “not effective and involving large amount of resources.”
The Chinese government initially quarantined Wuhan, a city of more than 11 million people, and viewed it as the epicenter of the outbreak. With more than 50 million people now under quarantine across China and nearly 8,000 reported cases, which is likely underestimated, the world is entering unchartered territory on such mass quarantine.
When people are quarantined with restricted movement, the natural reaction is to flee. This includes those not infected, for fear of contracting the virus, and those who are infected, to escape further isolation and restrictions. Efforts to provide food and other necessities also become a logistical nightmare when a more sensible solution that may evolve from this policy is widespread education and communication, coupled with mandatory use of face masks to limit the spread of the disease, as well as protecting those most vulnerable to infection.
At U.S. airports, screening has begun with passengers arriving from the Wuhan area. This is being conducted by identifying those with fevers. The challenge with this one-dimensional approach is that we are in peak flu season, so the number of false alarms will rapidly grow to unmanageable numbers, depending on what the threshold for assessment is set to.
For every possible passenger infected with the coronavirus, there may be hundreds who are infected with influenza or some other benign respiratory virus. It may be necessary to require high-risk and vulnerable passengers, such as the elderly and those with immunocompromised or immunosuppressed systems, to wear face masks until they are cleared at customs. This, coupled with widespread education and communication, will help suppress unnecessary fears and misinformation.
As a data scientist, finding needles in a haystack is a futile endeavor under the best of circumstances — unless one can restrict the size of the haystack or make the needles stand out. This principle can be applied in addressing screening of incoming travelers from infected areas. As the epidemiology of the virus evolves and more information is collected as to its geographical source, such data can be used to more effectively screen passengers and create sensible criteria for managing incoming passengers.
By expanding questions posed to travelers prior to their departure, the risk of spreading the infection can be reduced. Without such additional information, it will be both expensive and ineffective to stop the virus from spreading.
The coronavirus is a significant threat to our nation and, for that matter, the world. Much more information is needed to better assess its transmission and the associated risks. However, knee-jerk reactions that are nothing more than window dressing serve no useful purpose; our experiences with Ebola indicate such results. Taking sensible actions in a collaborative environment will prove to be most effective in providing the best protection for all.
• Sheldon Jacobson, a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is an expert on aviation security and risk-based passenger screening, and he is chairman of the INFORMS National Science Foundation Liaison Committee.
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