- Travelers from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Guinea will be subject to extra scrutiny because of concerns about Ebola.
- According to the CDC, these travelers will be directed to six airports in the United States.
- There, airlines will collect and send your information to local health departments for tracking purposes.
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The United States will begin to track people arriving from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Guinea, two countries facing Ebola outbreaks.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Friday that the United States government “will institute public health measures” for travelers from these two countries “out of caution” as the threat of outbreaks in the United States remains low .
“Starting next week, the US government will channel travelers from DRC and Guinea to six US airports,” the agency said in a statement. “Airlines will collect and transmit passenger information to the CDC for monitoring and public health intervention for all passengers embarking on a flight to the US who have been in the DRC or Guinea for the previous 21 days.”
The information will be shared with local health departments for tracking and monitoring.
Earlier this month, Guinea declared its first Ebola outbreak since 2016.
As Morgan McFall-Johnson of Insider previously reported, Ebola can cause fever, pain and fatigue. It has a mortality rate of around 50%. At least three people have died in Guinea from Ebola since the outbreak was detected in February.
The Democratic Republic of Congo also reported another outbreak earlier this month, according to the World Health Organization.
The risk of ebola becoming an outbreak in the United States is “extremely low,” said the CDC.
But the agency still recommends that the United States take precautions, especially as the country struggles with new variants of the coronavirus.
The researchers found at least seven new variants in the United States, each of which could be more contagious than the original strain.
It has been almost a year since WHO declared the coronavirus a pandemic. Since then, more than 28 million people in the United States have contracted the virus, according to the latest data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Of these, more than 500,000 Americans died.
In 2016, more than 11,000 people died from a two-year Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
The Guinean government is taking steps to end the resurgence before it spreads more widely. A new Ebola treatment center is under construction and an Ebola vaccine is being launched, insider McFall-Johnson said.