WASHINGTON POST : Why Hasn’t U.S. Closed Airports To Ebola - Ravaged Countries? ~ THE 5TH ESTATE ASIA

Saturday, October 04, 2014

WASHINGTON POST : Why Hasn’t U.S. Closed Airports To Ebola - Ravaged Countries?

Saturday, October 04, 2014

The most pertinent question to date regarding the U.S. Ebola outbreak: let the airlines go bankrupt, they deserve everything they get now for bringing this deadly virus into the United States - DO NOT FLY, BOYCOTT ALL AIRLINES

WASHINGTON POST

By Abby Phillip

10/03/2014

Now that a man in the United States has been diagnosed with Ebola, some are asking why we haven't stopped allowing people traveling from West Africa into our airports.

Airlines, CDC responsible for importing Ebola into America

Thomas Eric Duncan, the patient currently being treated in the Dallas area, boarded a flight from Liberia on Sept. 19 and arrived in Texas on Sept. 20.

United Airlines said Wednesday that it was told by the CDC that Duncan had used the airline to travel from Brussels to Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C., before flying from Dulles to Dallas-Fort Worth.

Authorities have said repeatedly that there is no danger of anyone getting sick from flying with Duncan because he was not symptomatic at the time.

But with every connecting flight carrying passengers who have recently been in the Ebola-ravaged countries of Sierra Leone, Guinea or Liberia, the chances of another exportation increase.

Several African nations have restricted or banned air travel from Ebola-stricken countries, and airlines including Kenya Airways, British Airways, Air Cote D’Ivoire and Nigeria's Arik Air have suspended flights from the countries. Front Page Africa reported Wednesday, though, that Kenya Airways and Air Cote D’Ivoire are expected to resume some of their so-called "Ebola flights" this month.

Others airlines have greatly reduced air travel in the region. Some of that is a natural consequence of the fact that few people, save for aid workers and government officials, are traveling in and out of the region.

But other suspensions reflect a widespread fear that a person sick with Ebola could get on a plane and potentially infect other passengers and airline crew members.

The airline industry has been trying to tamp down Ebola fears this week as more and more people ask whether there should be restrictions on who can fly into the United States.

More travel restrictions, though, aren't going to make the world safer when it comes to Ebola, according to several global public health organizations. In fact, they might make the situation worse.

Air travel restrictions ignore the way Ebola is transmitted

Ebola can only be contracted through direct contact with a sick person's bodily fluids. That means saliva, feces, urine, blood, vomit or semen. It isn't transmitted through the air, so you are more likely to catch a cold on a flight than Ebola.

“It is not an optimal measure for controlling the import of Ebola virus disease,” said chief United Nations spokesperson Stephane Dujarric. “The measure does not reflect what is known about the way in which the virus passes between people."

The U.S. has similarly spurned travel restrictions in the face of a more infectious, though less deadly, disease like Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) for similar reasons, even when sick passengers were coming to the U.S.

The State Department has warned U.S. citizens against non-essential travel to Liberia and Sierra Leone, but there are currently no plans to alter the travel warning in the wake of diagnosis, a State Department official told The Post on Wednesday.

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