Airline passengers arriving in Singapore from some Sars-stricken areas are now being scanned for fever by a military-grade thermal imaging camera.

“It’s military equipment,” said Ho Kok Khay, a director of the company that makes the equipment, Singapore Technologies. “I am not at liberty to disclose what it was designed for.”

At Singapore’s Changi International Airport it has been adapted for use in the war on Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or Sars, to scan human bodies for high temperatures.

Those who show up on the camera screen as “hot bodies,” or with a temperature greater than 37.5 C (99.5 F), will be pulled aside to have their temperature taken by a nurse, said government spokeswoman Evelyn Ong.

One of the Singapore Technologies Infrared Screening Systems is currently in use and another eight will be installed by the end of the week, she added.

“One advantage is that is a friendlier way in which to check temperatures because its not intrusive to the traveller,” said Albert Tjoeng, a spokesman for the city-state’s Civil Aviation Authority.

The airport is currently screening passengers arriving on three daily flights from Hong Kong and China’s Guangdong province.

It will begin scanning 19 flights a day from other Sars-affected areas when it gets the new cameras, Tjoeng said.

Experts say Sars, a pneumonia-like disease, has been spread around the world by air travellers. There have been 167 reported cases of Sars in Singapore and 15 deaths.

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