President considers further interventions and appointing crisis leader, while concern grows over infected woman’s air travel
Barack Obama has hinted at possible policy shifts in US efforts to contain Ebola, revealing he is considering fresh leadership to co-ordinate the federal response and is open to implementing travel bans if expert advice on its merits were to shift.
Speaking to reporters at the White House after his second two-hour meeting with advisers in as many days, the president also said extra disease control specialists were being sent to Ohio amid fears that a second nurse infected with the disease may have been contagious for longer than originally suspected.
“It is very important that we are monitoring and tracking anyone who was in close proximity to this second nurse,” said Obama, who earlier spoke with the Ohio governor about sending more experts from the Centers for Disease Control to the Cleveland area.
Amber Vinson, the second nurse to be diagnosed with Ebola, may have become ill as early as last Friday when she flew on a commercial flight from Dallas to Ohio, a health official said on Thursday.
Dr Chris Braden of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said at a press conference in Ohio on Thursday that the agency may expand its investigation to include passengers aboard her flight into Cleveland on 10 October.
“We had started to look at the possibility that she had symptoms going back as far as Saturday,” Braden said. “But some more information that’s come through just recently would say that we can’t rule out the fact that she might have had the start of her illness on Friday.”
Concern over the federal handling of the crisis, which began in Dallas last month, has grown sharply in recent days and put the administration under pressure to reassure the American public that further infections can be prevented.
Despite insisting earlier in the week that the various federal agencies responding to the crisis were co-ordinating well, the White House now acknowledges it may need an “Ebola tsar” to oversee the US response.
“It may be appropriate for me to appoint an additional person,” said Obama after his Thursday evening meeting with health secretary Sylvia Burwell, National Security Advisor Susan Rice and Lisa Monaco, assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.
“Not because these three haven’t been doing an outstanding job but [because] they are also responsible for a whole bunch of other stuff,” he explained. “After this initial surge of activity, we may have a more regular person.. to make sure we’re crossing all the Ts and dotting all the Is.”
But the biggest political u-turn may come over the vexed question of travel restrictions on passengers arriving from countries in west Africa where Ebola is most common, something Republicans have been demanding the White House reconsider.
The president insisted his advice until now has been that the risks of compromising efforts to tackle the disease in West Africa by cutting the region off from the outside world outweighed potential quarantine benefits, but on Thursday he suggested this balance may shift in future and said he would not rule out travel bans.
“I don’t have a philosophical objection necessarily to a travel ban if that is what is going to keep the American people safe,” Obama told reporters. “The trouble is all the discussion I have had so far with experts in the field is that it is less effective than the measures were are already implementing.”
“I continue to push and ask our experts whether we are doing what’s adequate to protect the American people, if they come back to me and say we need to do more then we will do it,” he added. “If it turns out I am getting different answers I will share that with the American people and we will not hesitate.”
More immediate efforts are focused on stopping further infections stemming from the treatment of Liberian Ebola sufferer Eric Duncan.
On Thursday officials maintained that the risk of exposure for passengers who may have shared an aircraft with the Dallas nurse is low, but stepped up their checks and monitoring procedures.
The 29-year-old nurse travelled to Ohio last weekend to visit family and plan a wedding. Health officials said Vinson went to a bridal shop in Akron on Saturday, but otherwise remained at home with her family. She returned to Dallas on Monday with a low-grade fever of 37.5°C (99.5°F) and was diagnosed with Ebola the following day.
Three of her relatives who work at Kent State University in Ohio will stay at home and monitor for signs of the illness. A handful of Ohio schools closed on Thursday to disinfect classrooms after it was reported that some students and staff may have flown on the aircraft after Vinson, not necessarily the same flight.
Frontier Airlines said the plane was taken out of service on Wednesday as a precautionary measure after it was notified that a passenger aboard the aircraft had been diagnosed with Ebola. It said the plane is currently grounded at a hangar in Denver, where the airline is based. Six crew members, including two pilots and four flight attendants, have been “proactively” placed on paid leave for the 21-day incubation period.
Meanwhile, Nina Pham, the first nurse who was diagnosed on Sunday, is being transferred to the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, where she will be treated by experts in an isolation unit equipped to handle patients with deadly infectious diseases such as Ebola.