President Obama announced on Monday that the U.S. is "working on protocols to do additional passenger screening, both at the source and here in the United States," in his own words. "Here in the United States, at least, the chances of an outbreak"”of an epidemic here"”are extraordinarily low," he added.
The President will be meeting with health and security officials to discuss possible protocols, according to Fox News.
"What will be discussed at the White House is the issue of entry screening," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Currently, there is already a screening measure placed in African airports, during which travelers are screened when they are about to leave the African country. So far, the measure has proved effective, according to reports, as dozens of travelers have exhibited Ebola symptoms and have been stopped from traveling out of the country.
However, there have been complaints that those measures are not effective enough, since there have been a case of Ebola that occurred within the U.S. and another case that occurred in Spain. The President and the health and security officials are in the process of discussing whether it is necessary to add another screening measure at U.S. international airports on travelers who are coming into the country from African nations.
"Nothing's off the table in terms of keeping Americans safe, except doing things that might actually backfire," said Dr. Tom Frieden from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Currently, the Customs and Border Patrol officials have been trained to identify individuals who may be showing symptoms of the virus, but are not directly interrogating or asking questions to travelers regarding the illness.
"We've taken a number of steps to ensure that Customs and Border Patrol individuals are trained to identify symptomatic individuals," said Lisa Monaco, the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security, in a press briefing. "And where they do present people who may be symptomatic, they have instructions about what to do and how to handle that."
Dr. Fauci assured the public that it is unlikely for an outbreak to occur in the U.S. the same way it has been occurring in West Africa.
"The reason there is an outbreak [in West Africa] now is because the health care infrastructure and system in those countries is inadequate and incapable of actually handling the kind of identification, isolation, rapid treatment, protection of the people who are coming into contact, and contact tracing," he explained. "That's something we have very, very well established here. So we have a case now, and it is entirely conceivable there may be another case. But the reason that we feel confident is that our structure, our ability to do those things would preclude an outbreak."
