U.S. to Monitor Some Travelers for 21 Days

Oct. 23--WASHINGTON -- The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said yesterday that the agency will begin active monitoring of every person entering the U.S. from Sierra Leone, Liberia or Guinea in an effort to prevent the Ebola epidemic from spreading to the United States.

CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden said the new screening will supplement existing monitoring for the disease in the United States, including checking people who leave the west African countries, monitoring them again for signs of disease when they enter the United States and funneling them through a handful of U.S. airports.

"Ebola is new," Frieden said. "This is the first time we've had Ebola in this country, and in the past month we have been enhancing the ways we are preparing our health-care system and our communities and our public-health entities around the country to deal with it."

Yesterday's announcement will mean that, beginning Monday, every person coming to the United States from one of the three most-affected countries will be asked to check his temperature twice a day, call local health officials to report his temperature once a day and also report to health officials if any sign of the disease appears within 21 days.

Initially, the CDC will work with the states where 70 percent of incoming travelers from the affected countries are focused: New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey and Georgia. Those states, Frieden said, are working "very closely" with the CDC, though the agency will work with other states as well.

The ramped-up screening will include a hot line staffed around the clock for those potentially exposed to Ebola to call but also will include state and local public-health officials contacting travelers who do not cooperate with the request for daily check-ins.

Travelers -- including journalists and people helping in the response -- will be asked to give detailed contact information, including multiple emails, phone numbers and addresses. Travelers also will receive a "care kit" that will give them specific instructions on how to check for, and report potential cases of, Ebola. It also will include a distinctively colored card that potentially exposed travelers can present to a health-care provider if they are ill.

In Ohio, three people are quarantined, and the state is monitoring 142 people, including as many as seven in Franklin County, after a Dallas nurse who had been caring for Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan traveled in the Cleveland/Akron area last week.

Duncan died this month, and the nurse, Amber Vinson, has since been diagnosed with Ebola along with another nurse. Vinson is being treated at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, but her family told Reuters yesterday that medical tests no longer detected the virus in her body.

"She has also been approved for transfer from isolation," the family said based on a conversation Vinson's mother had with her daughter.

Vinson is regaining her strength and her spirits are high, the statement said.

The CDC was not immediately available to confirm the family's statement, Reuters reported.

The agency will continue to recommend quarantine for those deemed most at risk, an intermediate and less-strict quarantine for those at lower risk and active monitoring for the very low risk.

"This is another step to protect families, communities and health-care workers from Ebola," Frieden said. "We're tightening the process."

jwehrman@dispatch.com

@JessicaWehrman

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