U.S. lawmakers call for travel ban on nations hit by Ebola
More than two dozen lawmakers want the United States government to ban travelers from the West African countries hit hardest by the Ebola virus until the outbreak is under control.
Twenty-three Republican and three Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives signed a letter released on Thursday to President Barack Obama asking the State Department to impose a travel ban and restrict visas issued to citizens of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
In the letter, dated Oct. 8, they also asked U.S. health and border control officials to consider quarantine for anyone who arrives from the affected nations after being exposed to Ebola until 21 days have passed, the period in which they would show signs of the illness.
The letter was released a day after the death of the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, a Liberian man who traveled from his home country on Sept. 19 and died in an isolation ward of a Dallas, Texas hospital.
The case put authorities and the public on alert for the deadly virus and the government increased efforts to try and stop it from spreading outside West Africa.
The lawmakers said Obama should not wait for the World Health Organization to dictate how U.S. authorities should proceed.
Homeland secretary wants screenings expanded in airports outside U.S.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said on Thursday that he would like to expand screenings for the Ebola virus to airports outside the United States.
“My goal is that we create internationally as many different checkpoints as possible for travelers to go through the system,” said Johnson, speaking at Washington think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The department announced on Wednesday that it would begin screening travelers arriving in five U.S. airports from three West African countries with high rates of Ebola.
Johnson said most travelers entering the United States from the affected countries connect through other airports, often those in Europe.
Dallas County sheriff’s deputy tests negative for disease
Texas health officials say the Dallas County sheriff’s deputy who exhibited symptoms of Ebola has tested negative for the disease.
Michael Monnig had gone to a health clinic Wednesday complaining of illness, days after he was among a group of deputies who went inside the Dallas apartment where Thomas Eric Duncan was staying.
Monnig did not have contact with Duncan, but did see some of Duncan’s family members who are now in isolation. Duncan died Wednesday of the disease.
The Texas Department of State Health Services released a statement Thursday that a specimen from Monnig provided by Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital tested negative.
LaGuardia airline cleaners protest lack of protection against Ebola
About 200 airline cabin cleaners walked off the job at New York’s LaGuardia Airport on Thursday to protest what they say is insufficient protection from exposure to Ebola for workers whose jobs include cleaning up vomit and bathrooms.
Picket lines were set up overnight by non-unionized Air Serv cleaners outside Terminal D at LaGuardia for a one-day strike prompted by fears about the deadly virus, forcing airline crews to clean the planes themselves. Some signs read “Air Serv exposes us to vomit, blood and feces without protection” and “Air Serv puts worker safety at risk.”
The workers, who are trying to join Service Employees International Union, the largest service workers union in the United States, briefly left the strike line to attend an infectious disease training session organized by the union.
The striking Air Serv workers said they have not had adequate training to protect themselves and are not provided with durable gloves or face masks to use when cleaning with strong chemicals.
U.S. Marines, supplies arrive in Liberia
Six U.S. military planes arrived in the Ebola hot zone Thursday with more Marines, as West Africa’s leaders pleaded for the world’s help in dealing with “a tragedy unforeseen in modern times.”
“Our people are dying,” Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma lamented by videoconference at a World Bank meeting in Washington. He said other countries are not responding fast enough while children are orphaned and infected doctors and nurses are lost to the disease.
Alpha Conde of Guinea said the region’s countries are in “a very fragile situation.”
The fleet that landed outside the Liberian capital of Monrovia consisted of four MV-22 Ospreys and two KC-130s. The 100 additional Marines bring to just over 300 the total number of American troops in the country, said Maj. Gen. Darryl A. Williams, the commander leading the U.S. response.
As vehicles unloaded boxes of equipment wrapped in green-and-black cloth, the Marines formed a line on the tarmac and had their temperatures checked by Liberian health workers.
The U.S. military is working to build medical centers in Liberia and may send up to 4,000 soldiers to help with the Ebola crisis.
British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said his country would provide more than 750 troops to help build treatment centers and an Ebola “training academy” in Sierra Leone. Army medics and helicopters will provide direct support. Britain will also contribute an aviation support ship.
British troops are expected to arrive next week in Sierra Leone, where they will join military engineers and planners who have been there for nearly a month helping to construct medical centers.
The German military, which already has been flying material such as protective clothing from Senegal to the worst-hit countries, planned to start a wider deployment of aid in mid-November. The military is expected to set up a clinic for 50 patients.
Condition of Spanish nurse infected with virus worsens
The health of a Spanish nurse with Ebola worsened on Thursday and four other people were put into isolation in Madrid, while the government rejected claims that its methods for dealing with the disease weren’t working and blamed human error.
Teresa Romero, 44, is the first person to have contracted Ebola outside of Africa, after becoming infected by one of two Spanish priests repatriated from Africa with the disease.
In total, eight people were in isolation in Madrid, though only Romero had tested positive for Ebola. The others included her husband, two doctors who cared for her and an emergency services worker who had direct contact with her.
Three other people were released from the isolation unit on Wednesday after testing negative.
A health official at the Carlos III Hospital, where Romero was being treated, said her “clinical situation has deteriorated,” but at her request gave no further details.
British citizen dies of Ebola in Macedonia
A British man suspected of contracting the Ebola virus has died in Macedonia, a senior Macedonian government official said on Thursday, a further sign that the disease is spreading in Europe.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters a second Briton also had shown symptoms of the virus.
He said the two had been staying at a hotel in the capital Skopje and that hotel staff and the ambulance crew that took them in for treatment had been put into isolation.
The virus, which is spread through direct contact with body fluids from an infected person, has killed nearly 4,000 people in West Africa since March, in the largest outbreak on record.
