Israel to tighten border control amid Ebola crisis

Israel was set on Sunday to tighten border controls on travelers from Western African countries, as part of larger efforts to prevent the Ebola virus from spreading into Israel.

Passengers arriving from Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia by air, sea, and land, will be subject to questioning at the border, a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office said.

The decision to enforce a stricter screening process follows a meeting between the prime minister and officials from the Health Ministry, Transportation Ministry, Interior Ministry, Justice Ministry, the IDF, Israel Police, and airport authority on Sunday. This was the second high-level meeting on the subject in the past week.

“The State of Israel is prepared to bar, as much as possible, the entry of Ebola patients into its borders, as part of the broader efforts to protect the borders from illegal infiltrators and terror,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “This is a global epidemic and we are cooperating with other countries, and in addition to protecting our borders, we are taking a series of steps to isolate patients, if they come, and of course to treat them in our healthcare systems.”

“We hope there will be no need for it, but we are prepared for all scenarios,” he added.

The head of Ben-Gurion Airport, Shmuel Zakai, said border control had dispatched “a very large deployment” to prevent those ill with the virus from entering undetected.

Prof. Arnon Afek, director-general of the Health Ministry, said the ministry was in touch with medical experts around the world to track developments on the outbreak, and to prepare Israel’s healthcare services to treat the virus.

Representatives from Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and the World Health Organization met Saturday evening to discuss how to cooperate to prevent the spread of the disease, Israel National News reported.

On Friday, a spokeswoman for the Israel Airports Authority told The Times of Israel that Israel had begun warning passengers returning from certain Ebola-infected countries that they were at risk and need to get themselves checked.

The authority has been instructed to place signs to this effect and to hand out flyers that “clearly state” that arriving passengers from affected countries are at risk from the disease.

The US began instituting a stepped-up screening program to check the temperatures of travelers arriving from West Africa, starting at New York’s Kennedy International Airport on Wednesday. The procedure will be expanded over the next week to Newark Liberty, Washington Dulles, Chicago O’Hare and Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta.

However, it is unlikely the efforts would have been enough to identify Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person in the US with the disease, when he arrived from Liberia last month because he had no symptoms while traveling.

Duncan died Wednesday in Dallas.

The CDC said the Dallas patient had no fever or other symptoms while traveling and so wasn’t contagious at that point. But Liberian authorities have alleged he lied on a form about not having any contact with an infected person, although it’s not clear if he knew the person had Ebola.

Liberia has been hit hardest by the Ebola outbreak, recording more than 2,200 deaths, according to the World Health Organization. The total death toll as of Wednesday was 3,865, with most other deaths in Sierra Leone and Guinea.

The Foreign Ministry and the Health Ministry have for several weeks been urging Israelis to avoid traveling to Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.

In guidelines issued in early August, the Health Ministry advised Israelis to avoid travel, “so far as possible, to the countries in which the disease is spreading: Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.”

It noted that “thus far, there are no known diagnosed or suspected cases in Israel.”

AP, Times of Israel staff, and Raphael Ahren contributed to this report.