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By Bill Berkrot
NEW YORK, Oct 22 (Reuters) - U.S. health officials imposedfresh constraints on Wednesday on people entering the countryfrom three countries at the center of West Africa's Ebolaepidemic, mandating that they report their temperature daily andstay in touch with health authorities.
The move announced by the U.S. Centers for Disease Controland Prevention (CDC) marked the latest precautions put in placeby the U.S. government to stop the spread of the virus, butstopped short of a ban on travelers from Liberia, Sierra Leoneand Guinea as demanded by some lawmakers.
The CDC said that, beginning on Monday, travelers from thosecountries will be directed to check in with health officialsevery day and report their temperatures and any Ebola symptomsfor 21 days, the period of incubation for the virus.
The travelers will be required to provide emails, phonenumbers and addresses for themselves and for a friend orrelative in the United States covering the 21 days, and theinformation will be shared with local health authorities.
The travelers also will be required to coordinate with localpublic health officials if they intend to travel within theUnited States. If a traveler does not report in, local healthofficials will take immediate steps to find the person.
CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden told reporters the activemonitoring program will remain in place until the outbreak inWest Africa is over. The U.N. World Health Organization's latestfigures on Wednesday showed at least 4,877 people out of 9,936cases have died in the outbreak, the worst on record.
"These new measures I'm announcing today will giveadditional levels of safety so that people who develop symptomsof Ebola are isolated early in the course of their illness,"Frieden said. "That will reduce the chance that Ebola willspread from an ill person through close contact and tohealthcare workers."
The move builds upon enhanced screening of passengers fromthe three countries at major U.S. airports for internationaltravel. Beginning Wednesday, travelers from Liberia, SierraLeone or Guinea were being funneled through one of five majorU.S. airports conducting increased screening for the virus.
There are no direct commercial flights to the United Statesfrom those countries, but officials say about 150 travelers aday arrive in the United States on trips that originated there.
Six states account for nearly 70 percent of all travelersentering the United States from the affected countries: NewYork, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey and Georgia.Officials said the new monitoring will begin in those statesfirst and will be expanded to other states.
The CDC said the active monitoring program affects anyonecoming back from the region, including CDC employees andjournalists. The agency said all affected travelers when theyenter one of the five airports will receive a care kit thatcontains a tracking log, a pictorial description of symptoms, athermometer, instructions on how to monitor their temperatureand information on what to do if they experience symptoms.
Three Ebola cases have been diagnosed in the United States:Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian who fell ill after flying to theUnited States in September, and two nurses who treated him atTexas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. Duncan died onOct. 8, while the two nurses are being treated at otherhospitals.
NEW U.S. EBOLA 'CZAR'
In other developments, Ron Klain, the lawyer appointed bythe White House to coordinate the country's response to theoutbreak got to work on Wednesday. President Barack Obama wasdue to meet with Klain later in the day.
Leading drugmakers also gave details of a plan to worktogether to accelerate the development of an Ebola vaccine, withthe aim of producing millions of doses for use next year.
The World Health Organization said it hopes tens ofthousands of people in Africa, including front-line healthcareworkers, can start receiving vaccines beginning in January.
U.S. company Johnson & Johnson said it aims toproduce at least 1 million doses of its two-step vaccine nextyear and has already discussed collaboration with Britain'sGlaxoSmithKline, which is working on a rival vaccine.
Human testing of a second "investigational" Ebola vaccine isunder way at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's ClinicalCenter in Maryland, the NIH said on Wednesday. Testing on afirst possible vaccine began last month, and initial data wasexpected by the end of the year.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH's National Instituteof Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the need for a vaccineagainst Ebola is urgent and this vaccine, called VSV-ZEBOV, ispromising.
It was developed at the Public Health Agency of Canada'sNational Microbiology Laboratory and licensed to NewLinkGenetics Corp through its wholly owned subsidiaryBioProtection Systems, both based in Ames, Iowa, the NIH said.
NBC freelance cameraman Ashoka Mukpo, an American whocontracted Ebola while working in West Africa, is free of thevirus and was discharged on Wednesday from a special unit atNebraska Medical Center in Omaha, the hospital said.
"After enduring weeks where it was unclear whether I wouldsurvive, I'm walking out of the hospital on my own power, freefrom Ebola," Mukpo said in a statement.
"I feel profoundly blessed to be alive, and in the samebreath aware of the global inequalities that allowed me to beflown to an American hospital when so many Liberians die alonewith minimal care," Mukpo added. (Additional reporting by Ben Hirschler in London, Will Dunhamand Susan Heavey in Washington, Barbara Goldberg in New York,Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago and David Bailey in Minneapolis;Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Michele Gershberg, GrantMcCool and Jonathan Oatis)
