CDC to monitor travelers from West Africa for 21 days
Filed Under:
Ebola; VHF
Lisa Schnirring | Staff Writer | CIDRAP News
|
Oct 22, 2014
In a move designed to further enhance air-traveler Ebola screening, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today
announced a program to monitor all passengers arriving from the three outbreak countries for 21 days after they arrive.
The move comes a day after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that all air travelers arriving from Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone would be funneled through five airports that are already doing enhanced screening, such as temperature checks and questions about exposure to the virus.
CDC Director Tom Frieden, MD, MPH, said at a media briefing today that the 21-day monitoring will affect all of the approximately 150 people that arrive in the United States from the three countries every day, most of whom are Americans or people from the region who are longtime legal residents of the United States. Outbreak responders, journalists, and even the CDC's own employees are among the targets of the new screening step.
"We'll continue to do whatever we can to reduce the risk to Americans," Frieden said. The new measure has been in the works for some time and represents the next step in the process to boost the country's guard against Ebola, he added.
Steps will begin Oct 27
The new steps will require the involvement of state and local public health departments, which will be involved in actively monitoring the incoming travelers, who must take their temperatures twice a day and report the findings to authorities once a day, the same monitoring protocol used in Nigeria, which a few days ago was declared free of virus transmission, Frieden said.
Post-arrival monitoring will begin Oct 27 in six states that account for 70% of incoming travelers from the outbreak area: New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey, and Georgia. Other states will start the process in the following days, according to the CDC. Frieden said some states see very few travelers from the region, so the number of travelers who will be monitored will vary widely by state.
In advance of the new monitoring process, states will need to have an around-the-the-clock phone number that travelers can call to report their temperatures or any symptoms they are having, Frieden said. States must also have a procedure to evaluate patients, a plan to transport them, and a system for how the travelers will be monitored, such as through Skype, FaceTime, or even through an employee health program, similar to what the CDC does to monitor its employees who return from the outbreak area.
Frieden said that the CDC will have technical and resource assistance for states.
Travelers will report in daily about any intent to travel, and if they don't report in every day, health departments will take immediate steps to locate them to resume daily monitoring and reporting. People who had high-risk exposure to the virus will be quarantined and barred from commercial travel. People who have symptoms will be isolated and directed to a local hospital that has been trained to receive and evaluate possible Ebola patients, the CDC said.
Each traveler will be given a care kit that includes a thermometer, a log sheet for recording temperatures, pictorial descriptions of the disease, a wallet card with information on whom to call, and other resources.
Continued:
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-persp...africa-21-days
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