Australia implemented a combination of approaches in an attempt to detect infected arriving passengers at international airports. These comprised notification of health status of passengers by airline staff (the pilot or crew identified passengers with respiratory symptoms), thermal scanning (infra-red cameras were installed in airport terminals), health declaration cards (the passenger reported current symptoms) and nurses at border entry points reviewed and tested passengers detected by one of these screening tools. In the Australian state of Queensland, although the number of passengers screened was not reported, and was likely to have been many tens of thousands, only four cases of confirmed pandemic influenza were found from 780 passengers identified by one or more of these border screening measures [16] . No cases were detected by similar screening at the busy international airport in Perth, Western Australia (unpublished data).