NEWARK, N.J. — The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday recommended new restrictions for people at highest risk for coming down with the virus, and symptom monitoring for those at lower risk. But some state governors and even an Army commander have gone beyond that guidance.
As contradictory state policies proliferate in response to Ebola fears, the CDC’s recommendations mark an effort to create a national standard, one that would protect public health without discouraging people from helping fight its spread overseas.
The CDC now says even if they have no symptoms and are not considered contagious, people should stay away from commercial transportation or public gatherings if they have been in direct contact with the bodily fluids of someone sick with Ebola — say, by touching their fluids without protective gear, or by suffering an injury from a contaminated needle.
Absent that direct contact, simply caring for Ebola patients or traveling in West Africa doesn’t warrant quarantine conditions, the public health agency said.
But quarantines are determined state by state in the U.S., and the CDC is only empowered to issue guidelines. And even within the federal government, authorities were improvising Monday: a U.S. Army commander in Italy said he and all his troops returning from Liberia would remain in isolation for 21 days, even though he feels they face no risk and show no symptoms.
A nurse who volunteered with Doctors Without Borders in Africa was released after being forced to spend her weekend in a tent in New Jersey upon her return, despite showing no symptoms other than an elevated temperature she blamed on “inhumane” treatment at Newark International Airport.
President Barack Obama has told his Ebola team that any measures involving health care workers should be crafted to avoid unnecessarily discouraging people from responding to the outbreak. That’s already happening, Doctors Without Borders said Monday: some medical workers are reducing their time in the field to include potential quarantines afterward.
“The best way to protect us is to stop the epidemic in Africa, and we need those health care workers, so we do not want to put them in a position where it makes it very, very uncomfortable for them to even volunteer to go,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
But the governors of New York and New Jersey defended their quarantine policies as necessary precautions in dealing with a virus that already has killed nearly half the over 10,000 people infected this year in West Africa. Maj. Gen. Darryl Williams told The Associated Press that the decision to isolate returning troops was taken to ensure their family members’ comfort, even though none of the troops are showing symptoms, and he does not believe any soldier under his command is at risk.
Speaking by telephone from a U.S. base in Vicenza, Italy, Williams said he and his soldiers will be living in isolation under controlled monitoring during the three weeks it takes to be sure Ebola hasn’t infected them. Williams returned to Italy Sunday with 10 soldiers and another 65 due back in two groups by Saturday.
It’s just “normal concern,” Williams said. “There was nothing elevated that triggered this increased posture.”
A senior defense official said Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is expected to review the recommendations on Ebola, but has made no decision. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly so spoke on condition of anonymity. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the Pentagon’s policy on isolating returning personnel has not been settled and implemented yet.
Also absent is any uniform response within the United States to the increasing number of people and medical volunteers returning from Ebola-stricken countries in Africa.
“The response to Ebola must not be guided primarily by panic in countries not overly affected by the epidemic,” said Sophie Delaunay, the U.S. director of Doctors Without Borders.
New York’s and New Jersey’s governors announced Friday that any health care workers returning from West Africa to their states would face mandatory 21-day quarantines. Other states including Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota and Georgia have since announced measures of their own.