The Biden government is moving forward with plans to examine 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 late on Friday, several hours after Yahoo News first reported that government officials were finalizing the details of how the tests would work. “As a precaution,” the US government will institute public health measures for the very small number of travelers arriving from [Democratic Republic of Congo] and Guinea, ”said the CDC in a statement.
The US government will, according to the plan, send passengers from these countries to six airports where data will be collected for tracking contacts and they will undergo basic health checks.
The precise details of the exhibitions were still being discussed at the White House and the National Security Council on Friday afternoon. 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 group of Ebola cases in Guinea. Of the seven reported cases, five people died; the other two are isolated in dedicated health facilities. The specific species of Ebolavirus has not yet been determined, the WHO said at the time. As of February 15, 192 contacts have been identified.
WHO “considers the risk of spread in the country to be very high due to the unknown size, duration and origin of the outbreak; potentially large number of contacts; potential spread to other parts of Guinea and neighboring countries; limited response capacity currently on the ground; and unknown virus strain, ”according to a bulletin distributed by US government agencies on February 18.
All six nations bordering Guinea are finalizing their operational preparedness and preparedness plans, according to WHO. The overall state of readiness in the six countries, according to a WHO preparedness assessment tool, is almost 66 percent, which is still below the 80 percent benchmark.
“We learned the hard lessons of history and we know that, with Ebola and other health emergencies, preparation works. It is to act now or pay later on lost lives and ruined economies. Systematic surveillance, comprehensive preparations and strong cross-border coordination are crucial in order to detect any cases and ensure that they are quickly isolated, treated and that the vaccination of high-risk contacts starts quickly, ”said Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director for Africa.
A separate WHO alert, sent on February 11, details reports of Ebola outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since 2017, there have been five outbreaks in Congo, including one that lasted from 2018 to 2020, causing almost 2,300 deaths. The current outbreak is occurring in the same region.
The news comes less than six months after the previous US government ended similar measures for COVID-19, considering them of little use in controlling the spread of the virus. Before the reversal, international passengers passed through 15 airports and underwent basic health checks, including temperature checks.
Since the Ebola virus was 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 2014-16 outbreak in West Africa was the largest, resulting in more than 28,000 cases and more than 11,000 deaths – a lethality rate of about 63 percent.
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