Chicago O'Hare Airport will not have enhanced Ebola screening as flights rerouted to Dulles, documents show
The Centers for Disease Control and U.S. Department of Homeland Security are stepping up screening for the Ebola virus in air travelers, but despite naming Chicago O'Hare International Airport as one of those locations, new documents obtained by CBS News Chicago show that's no longer the case.
An outbreak of the Ebola virus in three African countries has been tied to more than 130 deaths, 51 confirmed cases and almost 600 suspected cases. The cases have been confirmed in Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and South Sudan, and there are deaths and suspected cases in those countries as well.
The new CDC airport screening procedures were put in place earlier this week for passengers arriving in the U.S. from those three countries.
Under a 30-day order under the Public Health Act issued Monday, the CDC said it would enact enhanced health screening and traveler monitoring for passengers arriving in the U.S. from those three countries. They are also enacting entry restrictions for non-U.S. passport holders if they have been in Uganda, DRC or South Sudan in the previous 21 days.
The CDC named O'Hare as one of five U.S. airports that will be conducting enhanced screening, but Chicago public health officials said that's not the case.
The Chicago Department of Public Health said that while the CDC Chicago Port Health Station at O'Hare conducts general infectious disease surveillance all the time, at the moment there is no enhanced screening being conducted for Ebola.
In a memo scheduled to be published Thursday, obtained by CBS News Chicago, DHS said all commercial flights carrying people who traveled to the DRC, Uganda or South Sudan will be directed to land at Washington-Dulles International Airport for enhanced screenings.
In the first order, O'Hare, Dulles, John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and Los Angeles International Airport were all named as sites for enhanced screenings because they get the most flights from the areas affected by the Ebola outbreak.
"This is a multilayered approach that requires many different parts of the government to work together," said Dr. Emily Landon, infectious diseases specialist at University of Chicago Medicine. "What it is, is allowing individuals who've traveled in those places to have their risks assessed to make sure that they're plugged into the care system and the tracking system and really great public health following them so that we can make sure that if they do get sick, they're handled appropriately so that they're not spreading any disease in the United States."
Landon said the strategy of redirecting flights to Dulles instead of enhancing screening at five airports can avoid spreading resources and straining other airports.
"It makes much more sense to just have those returning travelers come back through one port of entry so that we can do the screening and get them plugged into the public health system," she said. "The best way of getting an infection like this under control is to help control it at its source."
The World Health Organization has declared the outbreak a global health emergency, but insists it is not a "pandemic emergency," emphasizing cases are high in the national and regional levels in the affected countries, but low worldwide.
The CDC is also assuring Americans the risk Ebola spread in the U.S. is low. CBS News chief medical correspondent Dr. John Lapook said things like airport screenings help, but solid public heath strategies are proven to work the best, especially with a virus that has an incubation period of up to 21 days.
"That's just old fashioned public health contact tracing, boots on the ground, identifying who's infected, who did they have come in contact with, and trying to put them in quarantine if they're infected, isolate them, use protective equipment," he said.
CPDH said they will be notified of Chicago residents returning from outbreak-affected regions and will be monitoring these individuals for illness if they hear of one.
WHO experts said they believe the outbreak probably began a couple months ago based on the scale of the situation in the DRC, and said it does not meet currently meet the pandemic emergency threshold.
