Exclusive: White House orders enhanced airport screenings for Ebola

Exclusive: White House orders enhanced airport screenings for Ebola


The Biden administration is moving forward with plans to screen airline passengers from two African countries arriving in the U.S. for Ebola, which will involve sending them to one of about a half dozen designated airports.

The Centers for Disease Control confirmed the plan Friday evening, several hours after Yahoo News first reported that administration officials were finalizing details of how the screenings would work. “Out of an abundance of caution," the U.S. government will institute public health measures for the very small number of travelers arriving from the [Democratic Republic of Congo] and Guinea,” the CDC said in a statement.

The U.S. government will, under the plan, send passengers from those countries to six airports where data will be collected for contact tracing and they will undergo basic health screenings.
Travelers walks past a test system of thermal imaging cameras which check body temperatures at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) amid the COVID-19 pandemic on June 24, 2020 in Los Angeles, California. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Travelers at Los Angeles International Airport in June walk past thermal imaging cameras that check body temperatures. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

The precise details of the screenings were still under discussion at the White House and National Security Council on Friday afternoon shortly. The changes will to into effect next week, according to the CDC.

The White House and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Feb. 17, the World Health Organization reported a cluster of Ebola cases in Guinea. Out of seven reported cases, five people died; the other two are in isolation in dedicated health care facilities. The specific Ebolavirus species is not yet determined, the WHO reported at the time. As of Feb. 15, 192 contacts had been identified.

The WHO “considers the risk of spread in the country as very high given the unknown size, duration and origin of the outbreak; potentially large number of contacts; potential spread to other parts of Guinea and neighboring countries; limited response capacity currently on the ground; and unknown virus strain,” according to a bulletin circulated to U.S. government agencies on Feb. 18.

All six nations bordering Guinea are finalizing their national preparedness and readiness operational plans, according to the WHO. The overall state of readiness in the six countries, according to a WHO readiness assessment tool, is nearly 66 percent, which is still lower than the benchmark of 80 percent.

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