- Travelers arriving from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Guinea will be investigated further due to Ebola concerns.
- According to the CDC, these travelers will be directed to six U.S. airports.
- There, airlines will collect their information and send it to local health departments for tracking purposes.
- Visit the Insider Business Department for more stories.
The United States will track down people from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Guinea, two countries affected by Ebola outbreaks.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Friday that the U.S. government will introduce “public health measures” for travelers entering from these two countries “out of an abundance of caution” because the threat of outbreaks in the US remains low .
“Starting next week, the U.S. government will direct travelers from DRC and Guinea to six U.S. airports,” the agency said in a statement. “Airline will collect passenger information and transmit it to CDC for the follow-up and intervention of public health for all passengers who were on a flight to the US that was in the DRC or Guinea within the previous 21 days.”
The information will be shared with local health departments for detection and monitoring.
Earlier this month, Guinea declared its first Ebola outbreak since 2016.
As previously reported by Morgan McFall-Johnson of Insider, Ebola can lead to fever, pain and fatigue. It has a mortality rate of about 50%. At least three people have been killed by Ebola in Guinea since the outbreak in February.
According to the World Health Organization, the Democratic Republic of Congo also reported another outbreak earlier this month.
The risk of Ebola becoming an outbreak in the United States is “very low,” the CDC said.
But the agency still recommends that the US take precautions, especially as the country is battling new variants of the coronavirus.
Researchers have found at least seven new variants in the United States, each of which may be more contagious than the original strain.
It has been almost a year since the WHO declared the coronavirus a pandemic. Since then, more than 28 million people in the United States have contracted the virus, according to the latest data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Of those, more than 500,000 Americans died.
In 2016, more than 11,000 people died from a two-year Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
The Guinean government is taking steps to end the revival before it spreads further. A new Ebola treatment center is being built and an Ebola vaccine is being phased out, reports McFall-Johnson of Insider.