Nearly two dozen people are being monitored for the Ebola virus in Washington state after traveling to African countries where infection rates have increased in recent months, health officials said on Friday.
The state placed 23 “people under monitoring” for the deadly disease for 21 days after they returned to the United States from Guinea and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the state health department said in a press release.
The virus began to devastate parts of N’Zérékoré province in Guinea – a country where thousands of people died of the disease between 2014 and 2016 – along with North Kivu province in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the press release. .
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now require airlines to collect and provide contact information for all passengers who have been to these two countries, according to health officials.
But officials stressed that Washington state residents are still at “low risk” of contracting the virus.
Ebola, which is far more deadly than the coronavirus, killed at least 11,300 in Guinea, which has a population of 12 million, during the Ebola crisis that began in 2014.
In February, Guinea declared that the Ebola virus had become an epidemic after three people died and four others were hospitalized.
People with the virus usually experience fever, aches and pains along with vomiting, diarrhea and other symptoms.