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The Biden administration is moving forward with plans to screen airline passengers from two African countries arriving in the United States for Ebola, which will involve sending them to one of about half a dozen designated airports.
The Centers for Disease Control confirmed the plan on Friday night, hours after Yahoo News first announced that administration officials were finalizing details on how the screenings work. “As a precaution,” the US government will institute public health measures for the very small number of travelers arriving from the [Democratic Republic of Congo] and Guinea, ”the CDC said in a statement.
As part of the plan, the US government will send passengers from those countries to six airports where data will be collected for contact tracing and they will undergo basic health examinations.
The precise details of the projections were still under discussion at the White House and the National Security Council on Friday afternoon shortly. The changes will take effect next week, according to the CDC.
The White House and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
On February 17, the World Health Organization reported a cluster of Ebola cases in Guinea. Of the seven reported cases, five people have died; the other two are isolated in dedicated health care facilities. The specific species of Ebolavirus is not yet determined, the WHO reported at the time. As of February 15, 192 contacts had been identified.
The WHO “considers the risk of spread in the country to be very high given the unknown extent, duration and origin of the epidemic; potentially large number of contacts; potential spread to other parts of Guinea and neighboring countries; limited response capacity currently on the ground; and an unknown virus strain, ”according to a bulletin released to US government agencies on Feb. 18.
Guinea’s six border countries are finalizing their national operational readiness and preparedness plans, according to the WHO. The overall readiness in the six countries, according to a WHO readiness assessment tool, is nearly 66 percent, which is still below the benchmark of 80 percent.
“We have learned the hard lessons of history, and we know that with Ebola and other health emergencies, preparedness works. It’s act now or pay later in lost lives and ruined economies. Systematic surveillance, comprehensive preparations and strong cross-border coordination are essential to detect any case and ensure that it is quickly isolated, treated and that vaccination of high-risk contacts begins quickly, ”said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa.
A separate WHO alert, sent on February 11, detailed reports on the Ebola outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Since 2017, there have been five outbreaks in Congo, including one that raged from 2018 to 2020, causing nearly 2,300 deaths. The current epidemic is occurring in the same region.
The news comes less than six months after the previous US administration ended similar measures for COVID-19, deeming them of little use in controlling the spread of the virus. Prior to the reversal, international passengers were routed to 15 airports and underwent basic health checks, including temperature checks.
Since the Ebola viruses were first identified in 1976, more than 20 known outbreaks of the disease have been identified in sub-Saharan Africa, including Sudan, Uganda and Gabon. The 2014-2016 epidemic in West Africa was the largest, resulting in more than 28,000 cases and over 11,000 deaths – a case fatality rate of around 63%.
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