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No mandatory Ebola quarantine for health workers coming to Washington area

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WASHINGTON POST                                                                               Oct. 26, 2014

By Spencer S. Hsu and Nia-Malika Henderson

One day after governors in New York, New Jersey and Illinois imposed a mandatory 21-day quarantine on medical workers returning from Ebola-stricken countries in West Africa, public health officials in the District, Maryland and Virginia did not follow suit Saturday, intensifying a national debate over how to prevent the spread of the disease.

Health officials are working to develop a consistent approach for the area around the nation’s capital. Joxel Garcia, director of the D.C. Department of Health, said that a mandatory quarantine was not scientifically justified and could have a chilling effect on the medical personnel, many of them volunteers, needed to treat Ebola patients at home and overseas.

The differing views highlight challenges confronting federal and state politicians as well as health officials as they race to keep up with fast-changing circumstances and competing political, scientific and legal demands, experts said.

Lawrence O. Gostin, a global health professor at Georgetown University Law School and an adviser to the World Health Organization, said quarantining medical workers might sound reassuring, but it is an overreaction that if widely adopted “will come back to haunt us.”

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REUTERS                                                                                  oCT. 26, 2014

Reuters) - Quarantines imposed on travelers coming from Ebola-affected countries in West Africa could discourage American health workers from going there to help fight the epidemic, a senior U.S. medical official said on Sunday, warning such measures were "a little bit draconian...."

"I don't want to be directly criticizing the decision that was made but we have to be careful that there are unintended consequences," said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

But New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, asked to respond to Fauci’s comment that it is not good science to quarantine people who are not symptomatic, said, "I don’t believe that when you’re dealing with something as serious as this that we can count on a voluntary system.”

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/26/us-health-ebola-usa-idUSKBN0IF03L20141026

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