US diplomats face Ebola screening

WASHINGTON The US ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, will abide by whatever rules apply to her when she returns to America from a tour of nations hit by Ebola, an official said Monday.
But the diplomat and her party will not come into contact with any people infected with the disease and will not be visiting any treatment units during her three-nation trip, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki stressed.
Power criticised the level of international support for nations hit by Ebola as she began a tour of west African nations at the epicentre of the deadly outbreak at the weekend.
Inside10“The international response to Ebola needs to be taken to a wholly different scale than it is right now,” Power told NBC News as she arrived in Guinea on Sunday.
She will also travel to Sierra Leone and Liberia, visiting the three nations where almost all the more than 4,900 deaths from the Ebola epidemic have occurred.
The trip came just as a furious row erupted over tough restrictions imposed by the states of New Jersey and New York.
They had initially slapped a blanket quarantine on travellers from Ebola-hit countries even if they were symptom free and had not come into contact with infected countries. That was reversed under pressure from the Obama administration.
Under the regulations outlined by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, travellers such as Power who have had no contact with Ebola patients are screened before leaving and when they arrive back at one of five US airports including New York.
If they are symptom free, they are then required to monitor their temperatures for 21 days and report to state and local health officials.
Power and her team are “observing all hand-washing protocols and doing temperature screenings multiple times a day,” Psaki told reporters.
“Depending on where she is and where she lands, she’ll abide by whatever the requirements are.”

sourced:ttrweekly.com