The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday announced new measures to monitor for Ebola anyone entering the United States from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea for a 21-day period.
State and local health officials in the U.S. will check travellers from Ebola-affected West African countries of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone daily for temperature for a 21-day period. (Abbas Dulleh/ Associated Press)
Under the measures starting Monday, travellers from the three West African countries will be expected to check in with health officials every day and report their temperatures and any Ebola symptoms through the 21-day period, the CDC said.
The director of CDC said the program will cover visitors as well as aid workers, journalists and other Americans returning from Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea.
The program will start in six states: New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey and Georgia.
“The bottom line is that we have to keep our guard against Ebola,” CDC Director Tom Frieden said.
Travellers from those countries will be given information cards and a thermometer and be required to make daily check-ins with state or local health officials to report their status. He said the check-ins could be in person, by telephone, Skype or Facetime or through employers — CDC was consulting with the state and local officials to help them work that out.
Affected travellers would be required to report any travel plans. Frieden said if they don’t cooperate, they would be immediately called in.
Elsewhere in the U.S., a video journalist has recovered from Ebola and hospital officials in Omaha say he’s been released.
Nebraska Medical Center officials say Ashoka Mukpo was released around 9 a.m. Wednesday from the hospital’s biocontainment unit. In a statement read at a news conference later, Mukpo said, in part: “Today is a joyful day.”
Mukpo, of Providence, Rhode Island, contracted the virus while working in Liberia as a freelance cameraman for NBC and other media outlets.
The World Health Organization said Wednesday that a total of 9,936 cases of Ebola virus disease have been reported in five affected countries of Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Spain, and the United States of America and two previously
affected countries (Nigeria and Senegal) up to the end of Oct. 19. Of these, 4,877 deaths have been reported.
The WHO said there is widespread under-reporting of confirmed cases in Liberia.
