If more Americans contract Ebola and need specialized medical care, they will be transferred to Europe instead of being brought to the United States, senior officials in Donald Trump’s administration said Thursday.
The announcement is the latest in a series of measures Trump Administration officials have taken to keep Americans exposed or infected with Ebola out of the country amid the ongoing outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The United States has already established a center in Kenya for any exposed Americans. It is scheduled to open on Friday with 50 quarantine beds.
It is expected that the center will be expanded to have isolation and biocontainment units for people who test positive, but those sick people will not stay in Kenya — nor return to the United States — officials said. Instead, they will be transferred to as yet unidentified European countries.
“The (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC) are working with the State Department to identify where those facilities could be,” said a senior Administration official.
(Expert believes it is “very difficult” for the Ebola outbreak in Africa to reach the US.)
The government has maintained that shorter flight times to Europe are the reason Americans who contract Ebola will be sent there for care. The only American to test positive so far, a surgeon who had been working at a hospital in the Congo, was flown to Germany.
“It is much better to be able to transport them to a center that can be reached in less time, instead of having to take them back to the United States,” the official commented.
At a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “We cannot and will not allow any cases of Ebola to enter the United States.” The CDC has blocked entry to the United States for all non-citizens who have been to the Congo, Uganda or South Sudan in the last 21 days.
(USA applies Title 42 and restricts flights due to the Ebola outbreak, a few days before the World Cup)
Another senior Administration official said, “We want the best possible care for American citizens,” adding that American doctors have been sent to central Kenya and to the hospital in Germany where the American doctor is being treated.
The quarantine camp is located at Laikipia Air Base in central Kenya. The United States has “prior approval” for the center and has been in talks with Kenya’s president, the official said. The center will be staffed by U.S. Public Health Service staff, including some who worked with Ebola patients in Liberia during the 2014 outbreak.
The outbreak in Congo, caused by a rare strain of Ebola called Bundibugyo, has grown rapidly, with 1,077 cases and 246 deaths, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). There is no vaccine or treatment for the Bundibugyo strain.
Last week, seven Americans who had been exposed to Ebola in the Congo were flown to Europe, including the doctor hospitalized in Germany. His wife and four children They are quarantined in Germanyand another doctor is in quarantine in the Czech Republic.
Senior Administration officials said they were not aware of any other Americans who had been exposed to the virus and needed to be transferred to Kenya.
