Airports rush to create health and safety guidelines for travel rebound

European airports are drawing up industry-wide guidelines on issues such as passenger health screening to ensure a co-ordinated response when travel restrictions imposed during the coronavirus pandemic are eased. The action comes after London’s Heathrow faced criticism from passengers for the absence of temperature checks as the UK enters its third week of lockdown in an attempt to contain the disease.  The airport has called for a global standard in passenger health screening for coronavirus as the industry currently takes different approaches based on guidance from their national public health authorities. In the UK, temperature checks have not been introduced based on advice from Public Health England. The authority believes thermal screening holds little clinical value and would detect only a very small minority of cases, mainly because symptoms of Covid-19 do not usually appear until 5-7 days after exposure to the virus. Instead, all flights to the UK need to provide an early warning by the pilot of any passenger illness to the airport and PHE. However, other countries such as Italy and China conduct body temperature checks.<br/>