US Ebola ‘czar’ starts work; drugmakers launch vaccine drive

WASHINGTON — The new US Ebola "czar" starts work on Wednesday as the Obama administration ramps up its response to the potential spread of the virus, and drugmakers started a project to accelerate development of a vaccine and produce millions of doses.

As the administration boosted airport screening measures in response to criticism that it was slow to act against Ebola, a Pentagon emergency Ebola medical team was scheduled to begin training at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas.

The virus has killed more than 4,500 people, predominantly in three impoverished West African countries, in the worst outbreak of the disease since it was identified in 1976.

US President Barack Obama was set to hold a meeting on Wednesday with Ron Klain, his new Ebola response coordinator, amid rising Republican criticism ahead of congressional elections next month.

Klain, a lawyer and veteran Democratic political operative, was expected to improve coordination between the federal government and the states after three cases were diagnosed in the United States, all in Texas; Liberian Thomas Eric Duncan, who died on October 8 in Dallas, and two nurses who treated him.

Leading drugmakers said on Wednesday that they planned to develop an Ebola vaccine and produce millions of doses of the most effective experimental product for use next year.

The World Health Organisation said it hopes tens of thousand of people in Africa, including front-line healthcare workers, can start receiving vaccines beginning in January.

US drugmaker Johnson & Johnson announced that it aims to produce 1 million doses of its two-step vaccine next year, and said it has discussed collaboration with Britain's GlaxoSmithKline, which is working on a rival vaccine.

Human testing of a second "investigational" Ebola vaccine is under way at the US National Institutes of Health's Clinical Centre in Maryland, NIH said on Wednesday. Testing on a first possible vaccine began last month and initial data was expected by the end of the year.

"The need for a vaccine to protect against Ebola infection is urgent," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He said the vaccine, called VSV-ZEBOV, was "promising”.

The US Defence Department's emergency medical team — including five infectious disease doctors, 20 critical care nurses and five trainers who are experts in infectious disease protocols — will gather in Texas on Wednesday to start three days of training, the Pentagon said.

No travel ban

The Obama administration has ratcheted up its response to Ebola but so far has stopped short of a travel ban from West African countries hit by Ebola demanded by some lawmakers.

The Department of Homeland Security said on Tuesday that travelers from the three countries at the centre of the epidemic — Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea — would be funneled to one of five major US airports conducting enhanced screening for the virus. The restrictions on passengers whose trips originated in those countries were due to go into effect on Wednesday.

Affected travellers will have their temperatures checked for signs of a fever that may indicate Ebola infection, among other protocols, at New York's John F. Kennedy, New Jersey's Newark, Washington Dulles, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta, and Chicago's O'Hare international airports, officials said.

Two travellers from Liberia were under observation in hospitals in Chicago on Wednesday after they reported symptoms during screening at O'Hare on Tuesday.

One, a child, reportedly vomited on the flight to Chicago, health officials said. A physician at the hospital where the child was taken said doctors suspect the patient does not have Ebola but was isolated as a precaution.

In New Jersey, a Liberian passenger detained at Newark Liberty Airport on Tuesday appears to be symptom free, Governor Chris Christie said at a news confrence. "There is no indication that he has been infected with Ebola," Christie said.

A Reuters/Ipsos online poll released on Tuesday showed that nearly three-fourths of 1,602 Americans surveyed favoured a US ban on civilian air travel in and out of the three countries.

But Elhadj As Sy, secretary general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), on Wednesday said such restrictions would not effectively curb Ebola.

"It [Ebola] creates a lot of fear and extreme panic that sometimes lead to very irrational type of behaviors and measures, like closing borders, cancelling flights, isolating countries, etc.," Sy told reporters in Beijing, where the IFRC was holding a conference. "Those are not solutions."

A group of some 50 Cuban doctors and nurses arrived in Liberia on Wednesday to help treat patients.

The two US nurses who contracted Ebola after treating Thomas Duncan were both improving. The US National Institutes of Health upgraded the medical condition Nina Pham on Tuesday to good from fair. The other, Amber Vinson, is weak but recovering, her mother said.

NBC freelance cameraman Ashoka Mukpo, an American who contracted Ebola while working in West Africa, is free of the virus and will leave the Nebraska Medical Centre on Wednesday, the hospital said.