Hudson wants travel ban from West Africa

CONCORD – U.S. Rep. Richard Hudson is asking the Department of Homeland Security to put a freeze on travel from West Africa to the United States as a precaution against the spread of Ebola.

“I have great confidence in our health care professionals in North Carolina and all around the country, but recent events demonstrate the enormous challenge they face in dealing with a potential Ebola outbreak,”Hudson, a Republican who represents District 8, said in a statement. “Therefore, I am calling on the State Department and DHS to impose enhanced travel restrictions and temporarily suspend the visas of individuals from West Africa until the outbreak is under control.”

District 8 includes most of Robeson County.

Hudson’s position followed on the heels of news that a second Dallas nurse became ill with Ebola and it was disclosed that she had been cleared to fly a day before her diagnosis.

“While there is certainly no reason for any of us to panic, we must also be vigilant and take every commonsense precaution to help prevent the spread of this horrific disease,” Hudson said.

While Ebola patients are not considered contagious until they have symptoms and only two people have been known to contract the disease in the United States, the revelations Wednesday raised new alarms about whether hospitals and the public health system are equipped to handle the deadly disease.

Federal health officials are being called to testify before a congressional committee today to explain where things went wrong.

President Barack Obama directed his administration to respond in a “much more aggressive way” to oversee the Dallas cases and ensure the lessons learned there are transmitted to hospitals and clinics across the country. For the second day in a row, he canceled out-of-town trips to stay in Washington and monitor the Ebola response.

Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said nurse Amber Joy Vinson never should have been allowed to fly on a commercial jetliner because she had been exposed to the virus while caring for an Ebola patient who traveled to the U.S. from Liberia.

Vinson was being monitored more closely since another nurse, Nina Pham, also involved in Thomas Eric Duncan’s care, was diagnosed with Ebola.

Still, a CDC official cleared Vinson to board the Frontier Airlines flight from Cleveland to the Dallas area. Her reported temperature — 99.5 degrees — was below the threshold set by the agency and she had no symptoms, according to agency spokesman David Daigle.

Vinson was diagnosed with Ebola a day after the flight, news that sent airline stocks falling amid fears it could dissuade people from flying. Losses between 5 percent and 8 percent were recorded before shares recovered in afternoon trading.

Frontier has taken the aircraft out of service. The plane was flown Wednesday without passengers from Cleveland to Denver, where the airline said it will undergo a fourth cleaning, including replacement of seat covers, carpeting and air filters.

Customs and health officials at airports in Chicago, Atlanta, the Washington suburbs and Newark, New Jersey, were scheduled to start taking the temperatures of passengers from the three hardest-hit West African countries Thursday. The screenings, using no-touch thermometers, started Saturday at New York’s Kennedy International Airport.

Even as the president sought to calm new fears about Ebola in the United States., he cautioned against letting them overshadow the far more urgent crisis unfolding in West Africa, where Ebola has killed more than 4,000.