While the most up-to-date data on the incubation period or the time until recovery from 2019-nCoV infection have been used in this analysis, these figures are likely to change over time as more data become available. Unless the incubation period is only a small fraction of the duration of infection in relation to that of symptomatic disease, and fever in particular, syndromic screening is likely to detect an insufficient fraction of infected cases to prevent local infections. In addition, the sensitivity of airport screening for the detection of 2019-nCoV has not been evaluated. However, we chose conservative estimates and show that with reduced sensitivity, the effectiveness of syndromic screening would further decline.