After a weekend of political theater over the issue of appropriate practices for health care workers to follow on their return from Africa, the CDC has come out with new guidelines on what these should be.
U.S. CDC says returning Ebola medical workers should not be quarantined
Federal health officials on Monday revamped guidelines for doctors and nurses returning home to the United States from treating Ebola patients in West Africa, stopping well short of controversial mandatory quarantines being imposed by some U.S. states.
Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), called for voluntary home quarantine for people at the highest risk for Ebola infection but said most medical workers returning from the three countries at the center of the epidemic would require daily monitoring without isolation.
The Obama administration's new guidelines are not mandatory and states will have the right to put in place policies that are more strict. Some state officials, grappling with an unfamiliar public health threat, had called federal restrictions placed on people traveling from Ebola-affected countries insufficient to protect Americans and have imposed tougher measures.
This stakes out a clear an unequivocal position that people who have not developed symptoms of an ebola infection do not pose a risk of infection in casual contact with the general public. Christie and his prison tent is excessive, unnecessary and uncalled for.
Health care workers returning from Africa would be well advised to book their flight through Dulles.