- ‘We have to be guided by the science,’ president says
- Woman in New Jersey tests negative but remains in isolation
President Barack Obama on Saturday urged Americans to base their response to domestic Ebola cases on “facts, not fear”, as New Jersey officials said a woman quarantined under a new policy in place for people traveling from west Africa had tested negative for the virus in preliminary tests.
The woman, who has not been identified, will remain in isolation at University Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, the state department of health said. The woman showed no symptoms of the virus when she arrived at Newark Liberty International Airport on Friday, but later developed a fever.
People who have Ebola are not contagious until they develop symptoms. The disease, which has now killed nearly 5,000 people, mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, is transmitted to other people through bodily fluids.
Officials said the woman was a healthcare worker who returned from west Africa, where she had contact with Ebola patients.
The introduction of tougher quarantine rules in New York and New Jersey came as officials scrambled to calm public fears in response to news that a doctor, 33-year-old Craig Spencer, who had returned to New York after treating Ebola patients in Guinea, had tested positive for the disease.
On Friday, New Jersey governor Chris Christie and New York governor Andrew Cuomo unveiled a joint policy requiring anyone flying into New York and New Jersey after having contact with Ebola sufferers in west Africa to be subject to a mandatory 21-day quarantine, the disease’s maximum incubation period.
Aid groups have expressed concern that the mandatory quarantine could dissuade healthcare workers from going to the region, which desperately needs more doctors and nurses to fight the virus, which the World Health Organisation said on Saturday has now infected more than 10,000 people.
“We have to be guided by the science – we have to be guided by the facts, not fear,” Obama said in his weekly address to the nation. “Yesterday, New Yorkers showed us the way. They did what they do every day – jumping on buses, riding the subway, crowding into elevators, heading into work, gathering in parks. That spirit – that determination to carry on – is part of what makes New York one of the great cities in the world.
“And that’s the spirit all of us can draw upon, as Americans, as we meet this challenge together.”
This is the second week in a row Obama has used his address to urge a calm response to domestic Ebola cases.
In a conspicuous attempt to allay public fear, on Friday Obama was photographed hugging Nina Pham, the first of two Texas nurses to recover from the disease after treating Thomas Eric Duncan, who contracted Ebola in Liberia and died in Dallas earlier this month. Pham returned home shortly before midnight on Friday, accompanied by her mother and sister.
Spencer worked in Guinea for Doctors Without Borders, known internationally as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), before coming down with a fever about a week after he arrived in the US.
The Associated Press spoke to two healthcare workers at the MSF treatment center where Spencer worked in Gueckedou, in southeastern Guinea. They said they were frightened to learn their colleague had contracted the disease. They told the AP, under the condition of anonymity, that hospital staff was taking extra care to protect themselves.