The Transportation Security Administration, at the request of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is posting MERS warning signs at 22 major US airports, including all three in the New York City area, a US official said.
The warning notes that the risk to most travelers is low but that people who get sick within 14 days of being in the Arabian Peninsula should call a doctor.
Disease experts say it is crucial that hospitals ask anyone who presents with fever or respiratory illness the person has recently been to the kingdom.
The virus, which causes coughing, fever and sometimes fatal pneumonia, has been reported in more than 500 patients in Saudi Arabia alone and has spread to neighboring countries and in a few cases, to Europe and Asia. It kills about 30 percent of those who are infected.
The CDC "is taking the current situation very seriously and is working in close coordination with local health authorities," said White House spokesman Jay Carney, who added that President Barack Obama had been briefed on the confirmed cases.
MERS is a virus from the same family as SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which killed around 800 people worldwide after it first appeared in China in 2002. Like SARS, MERS spreads from close contact with an infected person. REUTERS