Sydney (May 26, 2009) :  The thermal imaging scanners deployed at airports worldwide to spot travellers running the high temperatures associated with influenza are "literally useless," an Australian researcher said Tuesday.
 
Claire Hooker, coordinator of the medical humanities programme at Sydney University, said around 120 million people passed the scanners during the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak that began in 2003 but only 26 suspected cases were detected and only a few of those tested positive.

"As far as I'm aware, and I have spoken to a lot of people, these thermal scanners are literally useless," Hooker told The Australian newspaper.
 
Commenting on Hooker's view, World Health Organization adviser Alan Hampson agreed that the effectiveness of the equipment was suspect and might only serve to remind the public of the dangers of influenza infections.
 
"With SARS, I don't know that the thermal scanners actually picked up any cases," Hampson, head of Australia's Influenza Specialist Group, said.
 
He said not everyone infected with flu has a temperature and that those with a fever and capable of infecting others would not necessarily be picked up by the scanners.
 
Hampson said only the seriously ill would be spotted - and by that time their symptoms would be obvious to themselves and to fellow travellers.
 
Meanwhile, infectious diseases expert Peter Collignon said health authorities were scare-mongering over swine flu because it was no worse than the normal flu-season strain.
 
 "To really be a problem for people, it's got to readily spread from person to person," the Australian National University's Collignon said. "Now this one does do that, but on top of that it's got to be more aggressive or virulent than the current strains we have circulating repeatedly every winter, and this one is not that." -- dpa