CDC expanded enhanced Ebola screening on Saturday to include Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta airport, adding another major U.S. arrival point to the system already in place at Washington’s Dulles airport and George Bush Intercontinental Airport. The move comes after U.S. authorities issued a Friday order temporarily barring green-card holders from entering the country if they had traveled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda or South Sudan in the last 21 days.
Marco Rubio said last week, “Our No 1 objective on Ebola … has to be we can’t have it affect the United States. We can’t have Ebola cases coming here.” The CDC later said, “Containing quarantinable communicable diseases on US soil is highly resource-intensive, requiring specialized and isolated facilities with limited capacity.”
Atlanta joins Dulles screening
The CDC’s Saturday expansion brings Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta airport into the enhanced screening program that already covered Washington’s Dulles airport. For U.S. citizens returning from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda or South Sudan, the addition gives them a second point of entry into the United States alongside Dulles.
That added screening sits inside a broader effort to keep Ebola from entering the country while authorities work with limited isolation capacity. The CDC said “resource constraints” shape the response, and added that “applying this authority to lawful permanent residents for a limited period of time provides a balance between protecting public health and managing emergency response resources.”
Rubio’s border restriction
The Friday order narrowed who can enter after travel to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda or South Sudan in the previous 21 days. It initially blocks green-card holders for 30 days, while the earlier restriction covered only people without U.S. passports and exempted U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents.
Rubio’s public line on Ebola sets the political frame for the restriction: keep the virus from reaching the United States, even as the government expands how it screens arrivals at major airports. The CDC is pairing the airport changes with a travel rule aimed at a different group than the one covered first.
WHO outbreak figures
The World Health Organization raised the risk of the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola turning into a national outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to very high, and declared the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda an emergency of international concern. The WHO said 82 cases had been confirmed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, along with 7 confirmed deaths, 177 suspected deaths and almost 750 suspected cases linked to the outbreak.
Jean Kaseya, head of the Africa CDC, said 10 African countries were at risk: Angola, Burundi, the Central African Republic, the Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Zambia.
The next pressure point is practical, not rhetorical: whether the expanded airport screening and the 30-day entry restriction reduce exposure without overwhelming the limited facilities the CDC says are needed to hold quarantinable diseases on U.S. soil.
