South China’s Guangdong Province has been screening travelers from countries in West Africa struggling to contain an Ebola epidemic.
According to the provincial disease prevention and control department, travelers arriving from Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia are monitored by local health service centers for 21 days. Three weeks corresponds to the incubation period of the deadly virus. Travelers who exhibit symptoms of fever are immediately isolated.
Over the past two months, over 86-hundred people have entered the provincial capital, Guangzhou, from Ebola-affected countries. Forty-three of them who exhibited symptoms have tested negative for Ebola.
Guangdong has assigned close to thirty local hospitals to receive Ebola patients. Two of them have special isolation wards. The Ebola epidemic sweeping through West Africa has so far killed over 4,500 people.