US President Barack Obama cancelled travel plans for the second day in a row Thursday, instead meeting with his top healthcare and national security officials well into the evening, to address the safety of Americans when it comes to the Ebola virus.
So far in the US, one Liberian national who carried the disease died in a Dallas hospital, and two nurses who cared for him are now sick and being treated in specialized facilities in Bethesda, Maryland, and Atlanta, Georgia.
One of those nurses even boarded a cross-country flight to from Texas to Ohio with a low-grade fever last week, and was cleared to do so by the CDC, prompting several questions about how the issue is really being handled.
In remarks to reporters following the meeting, and despite days of reassurances that US hospitals are ready to deal with Ebola patients, Obama admitted mistakes were made at Texas Presbyterian Hospital.
"Because of these two incidents, we know now that there may have been problems in terms of how protective gear is worn or removed, or some of these additional treatment procedures may have impacted potential exposure. We don't know yet exactly what happened," he said.
"In the meantime, we have a number of health care workers at Texas Presbyterian who did provide care to Mr. [Thomas Eric] Duncan. And we are instituting a constant monitoring process with them, giving them the information that they need in order to keep themselves and their families as safe as possible, as the period in which they potentially could get the disease remains in place," he added. Obama said he spoke with the governors of Texas and Ohio, as well as the mayor of Dallas, and assured them his Administration will assist them in tracking and containing the virus.
"They have legitimate concerns in terms of making sure that the federal government is surging the kinds of resources that they need in order to handle any eventuality there to make sure that their folks, not just at Texas Presbyterian, but potentially at other health care facilities have the training and the equipment that they need," the president affirmed. "And so we're going to be working very closely with them over the course of the next several days and weeks in order to assure that they have exactly what they need to get the job done." There have been several calls by former health officials and experts for the US to institute a travel ban from West Africa, but while Obama said he does not "have a philosophical objection" to such a measure, he said his discussions with leaders in the field have pointed the other way.
"A travel ban is less effective than the measures that we are currently instituting," such as taking passengers' temperatures at the nation's largest and busiest airports, he noted.
"If we institute a travel ban instead of the protocols that we've put in place now, history shows that there is a likelihood of increased avoidance. People do not readily disclose their information," he stressed. "They may engage in something called broken travel, essentially breaking up their trip so that they can hide the fact that they have been to one of these countries where there is a disease in place. And as a result, we may end up getting less information about who has the disease. They're less likely to get treated properly, screened properly, quarantined properly. And as a consequence, we could end up having more cases rather than less." "Now, I continue to push and ask our experts whether, in fact, we are doing what's adequate in order to protect the American people," he added. "If they come back to me and they say that there are some additional things that we need to do, I assure you we will do it." More than 4,000 people have died from Ebola in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea so far, and Obama acknowledged both the US and the international community showed a slow response to the epidemic.
It has "taken a little longer than it should, and that's something that all of us should recognize," he said.
He also assured worried Americans that Ebola is a "very difficult disease to catch." "The main thing that everybody needs to focus on is that the risks involved remain relatively low, extremely low for ordinary folks." The participants in Thursday's meeting with the president included Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Dr. Thomas Frieden, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, National Security Adviser Susan Rice, and Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Lisa Monaco.