Two US states order tough Ebola quarantine rules

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FE Team | Published: October 26, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00

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NEW YORK, Oct 25 (AFP): New York and New Jersey Friday ordered a mandatory quarantine for medics who treated victims of Ebola in West Africa, after the deadly virus spread to America's largest city.
The new measures were ordered by state governors Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie the day after an American doctor tested positive for Ebola one week after returning from working in hard-hit Guinea.
Craig Spencer, 33, was in stable condition in isolation at Bellevue Hospital Center on Friday as he underwent treatment for the illness, which has killed nearly 4,900 people-most of them in West Africa.
The New York case revived fears about the possible spread of the virus in US cities, but a glimmer of hope came with the news that two Texas nurses infected while treating a Liberian man are now free of the virus.
In Manhattan, Cuomo and Christie announced additional screening protocols at JFK and Newark international airports at a joint press conference.
Steps include mandatory quarantine for up to 21 days of any individual who has had direct contact with an Ebola patient while in Guinea, Liberia or Sierra Leone, including medics who treated Ebola patients.
Additionally, anyone who has travelled to the affected regions but not had direct contact with an Ebola patient will be actively monitored by public health officials and quarantined if necessary.
Christie said that a health care worker who arrived at Newark with a recent history of treating patients with Ebola in West Africa, but who had no symptoms, had been placed in quarantine.
Spencer was rushed to the hospital with fever and gastrointestinal symptoms on Thursday, a week after returning from a stint in West Africa with the charity group Doctors Without Borders.
His live-in fiancee and two of his close friends are in quarantine but healthy, officials said.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, Cuomo and other officials sought to allay fears that Spencer had put New Yorkers at risk by using the subway, going bowling and eating out before falling ill.
"There is no cause for alarm," de Blasio said. "New Yorkers need to understand the situation is being handled and handled well."
Meanwhile, Hundreds of thousands of Ebola vaccine doses could be rolled out to West Africa by mid-2015, the World Health Organization said Friday, after new cases of the virus were reported in New York and a two-year-old girl died in the first case in Mali.
Two American nurses were declared cured of Ebola and one-Dallas-based Nina Pham-hugged President Barack Obama at the White House to prove it. But the states of New York and New Jersey ordered mandatory quarantine for medics who had treated victims of the disease in West Africa.
Steps include mandatory quarantine 21 days of any individual who has had direct contact with an Ebola patient while in Guinea, Liberia or Sierra Leone, including medics who treated Ebola patients.
Additionally, anyone who has travelled to the affected regions but not had direct contact with an Ebola patient will be actively monitored by public health officials and quarantined if necessary.
Europe's main stock markets fell on Friday over concerns about New York's first case, in a doctor who tested positive after returning from treating sufferers in Guinea, one of the countries at the epicentre of the world's worst outbreak of the disease.
The search for an effective vaccine to fight the disease took on fresh urgency as the WHO said several hundred thousand doses could be available in the "first half" of 2015.
"All is being put in place to start efficacy tests in the affected countries as early as December," WHO assistant director general Marie-Paule Kieny said.