Transportation

USA TODAY                                  Oct. 21, 2014
By Doug Stanglin

The East African nation of Rwanda is requiring all visitors from the United States and Spain to self-monitor, fill out an extensive questionnaire and report their medical condition for the first 21 days of their visits because of the Ebola cases that have surfaced in the two Western countries.

Coincidentally or not, the new screening follows an embarrassing uproar in a New Jersey school over the imminent enrollment of two Rwanda children that initially prompted their parents to keep them at home for 21 days.

The U.S. and Spain have both recorded deaths from Ebola. In Dallas, a Liberian national died of the virus two weeks ago and two nurses who treated him tested positive for the virus. At least two Spanish missionaries died in Spain after contracting the disease in West Africa. One Spanish nurse also tested positive for the virus.

Rwanda,  located about 2,600 miles east of Liberia, the closest of the three West African countries with the Ebola outbreak...  has reported no cases of the virus.

The dust-up in New Jersey involving two Rwanda children took a new turn Monday with an apology by the superintendent of the Maple Shade School District in Burlington County.

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UPDATE

CONGRESSIONAL HEARING ON EBOLA: STORIES  AND LINK TO TESTIMONY BEFORE A HOUSE  ENERGY AND COMMERCE SUBCOMMITTEE   (scroll down)

By Will Duham

(Reuters) - Congressional lawmakers criticized the government's response to Ebola in the United States on Thursday as some called, at a congressional hearing probing efforts to contain the virus, for a ban on travel from epidemic-stricken West Africa.

Federal Aviation Administration chief Michael Huerta told reporters separately that the United States is assessing whether to issue a travel ban "on a day-to-day basis" but that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had determined that a ban would not address the challenges posed by Ebola.

...Several schools in Ohio and Texas were closed after concerns that a nurse with Ebola traveled on a plane with people with ties to the schools.

REUTERS                                                          Wed Oct 15, 2014 5:10pm EDT

Chances that other passengers on the plane were infected were very low, but the nurse should not have been traveling on the flight, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Thomas Frieden told reporters.

The woman, Amber Vinson, 29, was isolated immediately after reporting a fever on Tuesday, Texas Department of State Health Services officials said. She had treated Liberian patient Thomas Eric Duncan, who died of Ebola and was the first patient diagnosed with the virus in the United States.

Vinson, a worker at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, had taken a Frontier Airlines flight from Cleveland, Ohio to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport on Monday, officials said.

WASHINGTON POST                           Oct. 15, 2014

By Abby Phillip and Fred Barbash

A second Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital worker who tested positive for Ebola flew on a commercial flightfrom Cleveland to Dallas on Monday, the day before she reported symptoms of the virus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

The health worker, who has not been named, cared for an Ebola-stricken Liberian man at the hospital, then tested positive for the disease in a preliminary test, Texas health officials announced Wednesday morning.

She flew on Frontier Airlines Flight 1143 at around 6 p.m. on Oct. 13. There were 132 passengers on board, according to the airline and health officials. The CDC said it is working to reach out those passengers and is also asking them to call a hotline.

The agency and the airline also said that the health-care worker did not exhibit any symptoms while on the flight. A person infected with Ebola is only contagious once the person becomes symptomatic.

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