A top healthcare official says it would be counterproductive to quarantine workers returning from Ebola-stricken regions of West Africa.
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, said thousands more health care workers may be needed to fight Ebola in West Africa, according to the Wall Street Journal.
A “blanket 21-day quarantine,” he said, would present a “major disincentive” to efforts to recruit healthcare workers to go fight the disease in Africa.
Fauci said this would put the United States at greater risk for spreading the disease domestically, echoing a point consistently made by the Obama administration. He also expressed support for grading the risk for having the disease in returning volunteers, and “if you’re at a high risk, you don’t travel.”
Ebola is spreading in West Africa because of a “perfect storm” in countries with poor medical care and “porous borders,” Fauci said.
There are nearly 14,000 total cases of Ebola in West Africa, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nearly 5,000 of those people have died in the current epidemic.
Two Americans have contracted Ebola in the United States.
