Three US airports are ramping up screenings for Ebola-infected passengers amid warnings that the outbreak will only get worse.
More than 900 people are suspected to have been sickened by the disease in Central Africa to date, and 220 people are thought to have died from the infection.
One American – Dr Peter Stafford – tested positive for the virus earlier this month after working in the region and was transported to Germany for treatment. Two aid workers who returned to Italy are also showing symptoms consistent with the virus.
Officials in the US said on Friday that people returning to the US from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda and South Sudan would need to fly to one of three US airports for screenings: Washington Dulles International Airport near Washington, DC; Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Georgia; and George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas.
Now, Judge Lina Hidalgo, who is effectively the chief executive of the county covering Houston, has revealed the extra measures airports are taking to prevent Ebola from entering the US.
In a post on Facebook, she detailed how screening would work at the Houston airport beginning Tuesday. Measures include temperature checks, a questionnaire and Ebola tests for travelers who had recently been to a country recording an outbreak.
She said: ‘When someone flies into our airport from these [affected] countries, or even if they’re coming from a layover, they’re screened for a fever, [and] asked a series of questions.’
If the individual does not have a fever or symptoms, she said they are allowed to travel on – but are asked to provide contact information in case authorities need to check up on them.
World Health Organisation says the outbreak poses ‘very high’ risk for Congo, but risk of disease spreading globally remains low
If they do have symptoms, however, they are taken to one of two hospitals in Houston and placed into isolation. The hospitals were not named.
At these units, if they test positive for Ebola, everyone on their flight is then warned that they may have been exposed to the disease.
It was not clear whether the other two airports would be following exactly the same measures.
To date, she said, seven Harris County residents – the county the Houston airport is in – who had recently been in Uganda had been screened. Two arrived on Sunday, while five more arrived on Monday.
All seven were screened in Dallas and Washington DC, she added, before continuing on to Houston.
None tested positive for Ebola or showed any symptoms of the disease.
Unlike Covid or the flu, Ebola does not spread in the air – it needs someone to have contact with fluids from an infected or deceased patient to pass it on.
About 50 percent of people who are infected with the current outbreak strain of Ebola die from the disease.
The cases are being caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, which has no vaccine and no treatment.
All flights to and from Bunia – the eastern DRC city at the center of the outbreak – have been grounded, but experts believe the virus may have already spread to nearby nations.
The outbreak began in late April after a health worker in Bunia started to suffer from a fever, hemorrhaging, vomiting and intense malaise.
The individual later died, but it took three weeks for tests to be ordered that confirmed an Ebola infection, allowing time for the disease to spread.
The African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned that eight other countries are at risk, although passengers from these nations are not yet required to undergo screening in the US. These nations are Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania, Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Ethiopia and Zambia.
Except Ethiopia, all these countries border either the DRC or Uganda.
The CDC says that the risk to the US public is ‘low’, although there are now warnings over potential cases in Europe.
On Tuesday, Italian authorities put a health alert in place in the northern Lombardy region of Italy after two aid workers returned from Uganda following a three-month trip.
Shown above are workers aiming to contain Ebola in Bunia, the DRC, which is at the epicenter of the outbreak
Shown above is an airport employee checking the temperature of passengers at Dulles International Airport in Washington DC
Both have developed symptoms consistent with Ebola, including a high fever, nausea, vomiting and intestinal problems. They have been transferred to Milan’s Sacco Hospital for treatment, a specialist facility for managing high-risk infections.
Lombardy’s regional welfare minister, Guido Bertolaso, said there was ‘still no certainty that this is Ebola’, and added he was ‘hopeful they will be negative’.
Among the deaths from the virus reported in the DRC are three Red Cross volunteers who are thought to have contracted the virus while managing dead bodies.
Many experts have also been caught off guard by the high number of cases that the disease has triggered before it was detected. Normally, they said, outbreaks are detected before they reach a hundred cases.
In previous Ebola outbreaks, the virus has killed more than half of those infected – many of whom died due to internal bleeding and organ failure.
The outbreak is being caused by the less common Bundibugyo strain of the virus, which causes the same symptoms as other strains and is believed to have the same fatality rate.
However, patients can carry the virus for up to 21 days before symptoms begin, which is when experts believe they become infectious.
In the early stages, patients suffer from a fever, headache, muscle pain, vomiting and diarrhea. But, as the disease progresses, they also have internal bleeding and then organ failure, which leads to death.
Doctors may treat Ebola using man-made antibody injections. Scientists at the University of Oxford are also now racing to develop a vaccine.
