Since the first diagnosis of the disease in the US, the American public has become keenly aware of Ebola’s dangerous reach.
As concern rises, the nation’s public health agency said it receives hundreds of inquiries a day about possible Ebola cases, and all but one have been false alarms.
“Right now there is only one patient who’s ever been diagnosed with Ebola in the US and that individual tragically died,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Tom Frieden said on Wednesday, as news of a potential second patient – who ultimately tested negative for the virus – began to spread.
He said the agency receives on average 800 inquiries a day about potential Ebola cases, up from about 50 before Thomas Eric Duncan, who died on Wednesday, was diagnosed with the disease at a hospital in Texas. Frieden said the added attention is positive because it means people are appropriately concerned about the virus that has killed nearly 4,000 people across Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.
“We expect that we will see more rumors or concerns or possibilities of cases,” Frieden cautioned last week. “Until there is a positive laboratory test that is what they are: rumors and concerns.”
Those words looked prescient on Thursday, when the negative test results came back for deputy, Sgt Michael Monnig of the Dallas County Sheriff’s department, the subject of Wednesday’s reports about a possible second patient. Monnig had, in his official capacity, entered the apartment where Duncan had stayed before he was admitted to hospital.
Responding to the growing concern that the virus might spread further, the US government announced on Wednesday that travelers from the three most affected west African countries will face enhanced screenings at five key American airports.
But for a handful of lawmakers, these changes were not enough. Twenty-six members of the US House of Representatives, including three Democrats, signed a letter to President Barack Obama on Thursday imploring the administration to implement a travel ban on the three most affected west African nations, and impose visa restrictions on citizens from those countries. The administration, backed by public health officials, has previously said it will not ban travel from these countries.
Speaking in Washington on Thursday, US Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said he’d like more countries to implement Ebola screenings.
“My goal is that we create internationally as many different checkpoints as possible for travelers to go through the system,” Reuters reported Johnson saying at Washington think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Meanwhile, about 200 airline cabin cleaners went on strike at New York’s LaGuardia airport on Thursday, to protest what they say are working conditions that do not protect against Ebola, among other diseases.
“God forbid we get a disease like Ebola, Hepatitis, even AIDS, for $9 an hour it’s not worth it,” said Wendy Arellano, one of the strikers. “They’re not going to take care of us. They’re not going to take care of my kids if something happens to me,”
Elsewhere in the US, there are two Americans undergoing treatment for Ebola: a freelance journalist and a World Health Organization (WHO) doctor.
Ashoka Mukpo, who contracted the disease while covering the outbreak in Liberia with NBC News, is undergoing treatment at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. He received a blood transfusion from an American medical missionary who recovered from the disease. Doctors are hopeful that the blood of survivors could be used to help sick patients’ immune systems fight off the disease.
The other Ebola patient, who has not been identified for privacy reasons, contracted the disease in Sierra Leone and is still receiving treatment at Emory University hospital in Atlanta, the hospital confirmed on Thursday.
Three other Americans, including the doctor who donated his blood, have survived the illness after treatment in the US, which included experimental drugs. One American has died in the current outbreak, a civil servant with dual American-Liberian citizenship and Nigeria’s Ebola patient zero.
