New York and New Jersey Tighten Ebola Screenings at Airports

NEW YORK TIMES                    Oct. 24, 2014

by MARC SANTORA  

NEW YORK --The governors of New York and New Jersey announced Friday afternoon that they were ordering all people entering the country through two area airports who had direct contact with Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea to be quarantined.

The announcement comes one day after an American doctor, who had worked in Guinea and returned to New York City earlier in October, tested positive for Ebola and became the first New York patient of the deadly virus.

“A voluntary Ebola quarantine is not enough,” said Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York. “This is too serious a public health situation.”

Outlined in a late afternoon news conference, the new protocols raised a host of questions about how, exactly, the screening process would work and who, exactly, it would target. The two airports in question are Kennedy International Airport and Newark Liberty International Airport.

The rapid escalation of screening measures came as a surprise after a day in which public officials had gone to great lengths to ease public anxiety.

It was also taken without consultng the New York City health department, according to a senior official.

Dr. Spencer was in stable condition at Bellevue Hospital Center on Friday afternoon, the city’s health commissioner, Dr. Mary T. Bassett, said at the news conference.The Blue Bottle, a cafe in a former loading bay in the shadow of the High Line that Dr. Spencer visited before developing a fever, was allowed to reopen on Friday after clearing a city inspection.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/25/nyregion/new-york-ebola-case-craig-spencer.html?_r=0