"Some have incredible worries, for example that bus seats will be infected with contagious diseases," said Trude Arnesen, chief physician at the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.
"Some people have started to use gloves."
Norway is expected to receive 20,000 asylum applications this year, an increase from 11,480 in 2014. In the first three weeks of September, a total of 2,785 registered asylum applications were received.
Speaking to the Norwegian public broadcaster NRK, Arnesen sought to reassure the public that such measures are unnecessary. She also remarked that a similar surge in enquiries was experienced during the outbreak of the Ebola virus in Africa last year.
"There are no special precautions needed. The refugees do not carry any diseases that we do not have in our flora already," Arnesen told NRK.
"We know that it is the healthiest people in a population that migrate. They're those who have the strength and resources to manage such a journey."
In 2015 the number of refugees in Turkey is expected to rise to 1.9 million, including 1.7 million Syrian refugees, and health officials have warned about life-threatening risks from infectious diseases, including measles and chickenpox.
"The vaccination program that we have been following with care for 30 years is now in disarray," Professor Savan Gunay told Today's Zaman in July, and warned that diseases which were previously only seen in 0.1 percent of people, now have an incidence of more than two percent of the population.
