A new device can identify air travellers carrying an infectious disease

THE GROWTH of air travel means a potentially pandemic pathogen could spread around the world in days. Even in the absence of that risk, few countries’ authorities are keen on admitting travellers who might transmit disease to those already there. Yet the precautions typically employed at airports to screen incomers’ health are rudimentary.It is easy to lie on a questionnaire. A dose of aspirin or other medication can lower body temperatures to the point where they look normal to the infrared cameras which some airports use to monitor passengers’ faces for fever. In any case, many of those infected might not show symptoms, and may even be unaware that they are ill. A cheap, uncheatable and instant diagnostic tool would thus be a boon at airports. And Dirk Kuhlmeier and his colleagues at the Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology in Leipzig, Germany, think they have one.