The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls on airlines to collect contact information for all passengers in Guinea and the Democratic Republic of Congo, amid two separate Ebola outbreaks in African countries.
Starting Thursday, airlines will have to collect and hand over contact information to the CDC for all U.S. travelers who have been to the DRC or Guinea in the past 21 days before their arrival in the United States, the CDC said Tuesday. On Friday, the CDC announced it would channel travel from the two countries through six US airports in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, the District of Columbia, Newark and Los Angeles.
The risk of Ebola spreading to the United States is “extremely low,” the CDC said last week, but health officials are preparing public health response protocols to ensure the disease does not enter the country.
“Timely public health monitoring requires that health officials have immediate access to accurate and complete contact information for travelers as they arrive in the United States,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a statement. . Any delay in contacting exposed people can increase the likelihood of the disease spreading.
Airlines will be required to collect passengers’ names, US addresses, primary contact phone numbers, secondary or emergency phone numbers and e-mail addresses, the CDC said in a statement. It is “the minimum amount of information needed to locate travelers reliably,” the CDC added.
The information provided by travelers will be “verified by US government officials on arrival to ensure it is accurate and complete,” the CDC said. The agency noted that a February 2020 rule authorized the CDC to impose such a requirement on airlines.
“Air travel has the potential to carry people, some of whom could have been exposed to a communicable disease, anywhere in the world in less than 24 hours,” the CDC said. “In some cases, public health officials may need to track travelers who have arrived from a hotbed, such as the Ebola outbreaks in the DRC and Guinea.”
The World Health Organization is responding to two outbreaks of Ebola, one in the nation of Guinea in West Africa and another in the DRC in Central Africa. Dr Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s health emergency program, said on Monday that 13 cases of Ebola had been confirmed in Guinea and four more were listed as probable.
The cases in Guinea now appear to be in the remote N’Zerekore and Gueckedou regions of southern Guinea, Ryan said. He added that 99% of the approximately 500 people identified who were exposed to the virus are being followed. More than 1,100 people have been immunized against Ebola since its recurrence last month, he added.
Separately, Ryan said eight cases, including four deaths, have been confirmed in the DRC. No new cases have been reported since Feb. 22, Ryan said.
Unlike the highly infectious coronavirus, which can be spread by asymptomatic people, it is believed that Ebola is spread mainly through people who are already visibly ill. The virus is spread through direct contact with the blood or body fluids of people who are sick or have died from the disease, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Ebola has an average case mortality rate of 50%, although it can vary by focus, according to the WHO.
The re-emergence of Ebola in Guinea and the DRC has global health professionals particularly concerned, as those countries are home to the two worst outbreaks of Ebola in history. The fire in the DRC, which was declared in June, lasted almost two years. By the end of the year, there were a total of 3,481 cases and 2,299 deaths, according to the WHO.
The infamous outbreak of Ebola in West Africa began in Guinea in 2014 before spreading across land borders in Sierra Leone and Liberia, according to the WHO. At the end of 2016, there were over 28,000 cases, including over 11,000 deaths, says the WHO.
During the West African Ebola outbreak, the US CDC confirmed 11 cases of Ebola in the United States, especially among health workers who had traveled to Africa to help respond.