Obama commends New Yorkers for calm reaction to Ebola threat

NEW YORK — The first person quarantined under strict new rules in the New York City area for people with a high risk of Ebola tested negative, New Jersey officials said on Saturday, as President Barack Obama said the response to domestic cases of the deadly disease needs to be based on "facts, not fear".

Under the new policy, anyone arriving at the two international airports serving New York City after having contact with Ebola patients in Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea must submit to a mandatory 21-day quarantine. The requirement exceeds current federal guidelines.

"We have been examining the protocols for protecting our brave healthcare workers, and, guided by the science, we'll continue to work with state and local officials to take the necessary steps to ensure the safety and health of the American people," Obama said.

Like last week, the president used his weekly address to discuss the response to Ebola, which has killed thousands of people in West Africa and has become a political issue in the United States ahead of November 4 congressional elections.

The new rules in New York and New Jersey were announced a day after an American doctor who recently helped Ebola patients in Guinea also tested positive for the virus at Manhattan's Bellevue Hospital. The physician, who was self-monitoring, started feeling symptoms about week after he returned home.

The first person to face the mandatory quarantine under the new rules was a medical worker who arrived at Newark Liberty International Airport on Friday after treating Ebola victims in West Africa.

Tests on the worker, who has not been publicly identified, showed no signs of the virus, New Jersey's health department said on Saturday. Even so, the patient remains in quarantine at University Hospital in Newark.

Meanwhile, Obama commended New Yorkers for their calm reaction to the city's first case. He said that medical authorities were responding effectively to the threat from the deadly virus.

"It's important to remember that of the seven Americans treated so far for Ebola — the five who contracted it in West Africa, plus the two nurses from Dallas — all seven have survived," Obama said.

He did not refer to the new 21-day mandatory quarantines announced late on Friday by the governors of New York and New Jersey for medical workers returning from Ebola hot spots. His administration is discussing similar measures.

The worst Ebola outbreak since the disease was identified in 1976 has killed almost half of more than 10,000 people diagnosed with the disease — predominantly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea — although the true toll is far higher, according to the World Health Organisation.

The United Nations agency also said on Friday that trials of Ebola vaccines could begin in West Africa in December, a month earlier than expected, and hundreds of thousands of doses should be available for use by the middle of next year.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie put the screening measures in place after Dr. Craig Spencer, a 33-year-old New Yorker who had been treating Ebola patients in Guinea, tested positive for Ebola on Thursday.

Spencer, who spent a month in the West African nation working with the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders, was the fourth person diagnosed with the virus in the United States and the first in its largest city.

Critics of the measures have raised concerns that mandatory quarantines could discourage Americans from going to help control the epidemic in West Africa.

Representative Diana DeGette, a Democrat from Colorado who was an early advocate of reassessing federal protocols on handling Ebola cases, warned against an overreaction by health authorities.

"It's a very fine balance between getting our people to go over and help treat these Ebola patients — and they are very courageous to go on the front lines like that — and also make sure we protect public health," DeGette said in an interview with CNN on Saturday morning.

The unidentified healthcare worker in New Jersey did not have any symptoms when she arrived at Newark Liberty International Airport on Friday, officials said, but developed a fever while quarantined at the airport before being taken to the Newark hospital.

Despite the negative test result, she will remain under mandatory quarantine for the full 21 days, the virus's maximum incubation period, the New Jersey health department said.

The federal government is considering similar quarantine rules, according to a spokesman for the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

The virus is not airborne but is spread through direct contact with bodily fluids from an infected person who is showing symptoms.