Everyone’s shook now!
The governors of the states of New York and New Jersey have, along with the rest of the country, been pretty shaken up by the news that a doctor who took a night out in the town has a confirmed case of the Ebola virus.
We’ve previously reported about how Dr. Craig Spencer is being treated for the scary virus after he returned from Guinea where he volunteered to treat people sick with the virus.
Well, the rules are apparently about to change, and these two governors have ordered a mandatory quarantine for anyone who arrives in an airport who have had any contact with the virus in West Africa.
And that quarantine will last 21 days for anyone who has had contact with the virus — including medical personnel and just regular airline passengers.
Both NJ governor Chris Christie and NY governor Andrew Cuomo said they needed to make rules more strict than the advised guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s what governor Cuomo said:
“It’s too serious a situation to leave it to the honor system of compliance.”
Although it’s unclear what this type of extended quarantine would mean – it seems it’s going to be something along the lines of confining returning airline passengers to their home, or possibly a medical facility if they don’t live in these states, where they’ll be monitored through phone calls from health officials.
[ Related: That First Texas Nurse Who Contracted Ebola Is CURED! ]
And although we’re sure many folks from these respective states will be glad that these precautions are going to go into effect – many aid groups believe these new rules will prevent other medical volunteers from heading to the three countries ravaged by the virus which are Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.
Here’s what one Massachusetts physician said:
“A three-week complete quarantine would eliminate two-thirds to three-quarters of the volunteers from the U.S. [going to West Africa.] They wouldn’t be able to spare the time.”
The group that Dr. Spencer works for – Doctors Without Borders – also says these precautions are unnecessary because the Ebola virus isn’t even contagious until symptoms appear.
Besides quarantining medical personnel who have treated people in West Africa for the Ebola virus, anyone who is even arriving from the three countries we previously mentioned will also be questioned to see if they have had any contact with Ebola sufferers.
Governor Cuomo believes that airlines do NOT need to hire extra workers to do these types of monitoring because “we’re not talking about a tremendous volume of people coming in from these areas.”
We definitely think this is going to be a drag for all those who have deal with the quarantines, but we’re sure a lot of people in New York and New Jersey are going to agree that these quarantine rules need to happen so the virus doesn’t spread.
Even if it does appear that it’s a lot harder to catch the virus than most people initially thought!
[Image via ABC7.]