Incident commander Ed Diaz and Public Health medical director Richard Brostrom said the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have not recommended individual screening.
The only way to effectively deal with a pandemic incident is to prevent the spread of the disease in the community, Brostrom said.
Public Health will set up a health desk at the Saipan international airport not to screen passengers, but to disseminate information about the H1N1 flu, Brostrom said.
He recalled that during the outbreak of SARS many years ago, 35 million people were screened at airports and millions of dollars were spent, yet not a single of those screened were found positive.
It is better to educate passengers, he said.
What the CNMI wants is to get the best advice from WHO and CDC, he added.
As an isolated area, the CNMI has to solicit “state-of-the-art recommendations” in protecting the island population from the dreaded virus, he said.
This doesn’t include individual screening of passengers at the airport, he added.
Screening is not only ineffective, it also frightens passengers and slows down the processing of the visitors’ entry, he added.
Precautionary measures are being implemented and these include educating the community, continuous flu surveillance program and keeping abreast with all communications coming from health officials, he said.
Testing kits have already been distributed to all of the CNMI’s main islands, Brostrom added.
He said it is important to pay attention to WHO and CDC’s recommendation and what other countries are doing.
Diaz said the people can protect themselves and others from the dreaded virus.
He said anyone who has fever and is coughing should not go to work, school or other public places.
