Heathrow Airport to begin temperature screening trial this week
Passengers arriving at Heathrow Airport’s terminal two will from Thursday be screened to see if they have high temperatures in an attempt to identify whether they have coronavirus.
The airport will implement thermal screening technology in the immigration area, which will automatically scan anyone passing through the terminal.
Later, it will also begin to use UV sanitation technology to sanitise security trays and scanning equipment in the security areas of the airport.
The results of the trial will be fed back to the government, in the hope the findings will help establish a new set of international standards for air travel.
Speaking to Sky News, chief executive John Holland-Kaye said the measures could be “key to minimising transmission of Covid-19 across borders”.
It is hoped that if the trials prove successful the government will not have to put in place the blanket 14-day quarantine on incoming passengers proposed last weekend.
The measures, which Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a week ago, were met with dismay from the airline industry, which said they would crush demand in a sector that has already been battered by coronavirus.
On Friday it was reported that should the plan be rolled out, Virgin Atlantic would not be able to fly again until August, while earlier the week IAG chief executive Willie Walsh said the measures would disrupt British Airways’ plans to ramp up service levels in July.
At one point, the plans had exemptions for passengers coming from France, but these measures have subsequently been rolled back.
Instead of a blanket quarantine approach, the aviation industry is pushing for government to implement “travel bubbles” between countries and cities that are low-risk.
Similar measures have already been implemented across the EU, where for example the Baltic states Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia have opened borders to each other.