The United States on Wednesday said it must prevent any cases of Ebola from entering the country from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where an outbreak has already caused a suspected 220 deaths and 900 cases, Reuters reported.
The World Health Organization has declared the outbreak of the rare Bundibugyo strain of Ebola the third-largest such outbreak on record, and a public health emergency of international concern.
We cannot and will not allow any cases of Ebola to enter the United States," Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday at President Donald Trump's cabinet meeting.
The Trump administration's response, which it says aims to contain Ebola to the outbreak region, is a departure from the 2014 Ebola outbreak when the U.S. treated patients in some of its 13 specialized infectious disease centers.
The U.S. is in talks with Kenya over opening a facility there to quarantine U.S. citizens who are exposed, two U.S. officials told Reuters on Wednesday. Kenya's government has not yet approved the plan.
Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said patients would be better off in high-containment infectious disease centers in the U.S. or Germany rather than in a newly built location in Kenya.
"I can't imagine that you can build a facility de novo in Kenya to have that same standard that we already have in these NETEC centers," he said.
"They know how to deal with every aspect of it, from taking care of the patients to dealing with the waste, and knowing how to get the technologies there that they might need if someone needs dialysis, for example, or mechanical ventilation."
He also said that such moves would disincentivize doctors from volunteering for the effort.
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