HealthDay News — With the death toll from the Ebola outbreak in West Africa rising to 729, the CDC has issued a travel warning for the region.
The Level 3 travel advisory urges that all non-essential travel to the affected countries — Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone — be avoided. “This is the biggest and most complex Ebola outbreak in history. Far too many lives have been lost already,” said CDC Director Tom Frieden, MD, MPH, in a press release.
The CDC is sending 50 additional experts to the region over the month, the CDC reported. The agency will be assisting in efforts in the affected countries to prevent patients infected with Ebola from boarding planes.
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If such incidents do occur, protocols would be put in place to identify sick passengers, alert those they may have come into contact with, and if necessary, quarantine people at risk. At this point, there are no plans to screen passengers arriving in the United States from West Africa for Ebola, the agency reported.
“It is important to note that Ebola is not contagious until symptoms appear, and that transmission is through direct contact of bodily fluids of an infected, symptomatic person or exposure to objects like needles that have been contaminated with infected secretions,” the CDC said.
