105 being monitored for Ebola in Pennsylvania
By Adam Smeltz
Triblive.com
Monday, Oct. 27, 2014
Pennsylvania health authorities were monitoring 105 people Monday for Ebola symptoms, although they would not disclose how many were under travel restrictions or quarantine on arriving from outbreak-ravaged West Africa.
The tally includes everyone in the state known to have arrived in the past three weeks from Guinea, Liberia or Sierra Leone, according to state monitoring rules that took effect this week under a federal directive for six states.
Public health officials could order those with possible Ebola exposure to stay off buses, airplanes and other mass transportation. People with the highest exposure risks could face isolation, the state Department of Health reported.
Still, it resisted the mandatory 21-day quarantines in three states for health care workers who return from the outbreak region, opting instead for a case-by-case approach supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
State health spokeswoman Aimee Tysarczyk said those under monitoring in Pennsylvania were showing no Ebola symptoms and presented no public health threat.
Across-the-board quarantines have become a flashpoint between federal health monitors, who call the measures an unnecessary overreaction, and state policymakers who argue the rules are a common-sense safeguard.
A former CDC specialist, Dr. Eileen Farnon, said the mandates send mixed messages to people worried about how Ebola spreads.
“I think it will have the effect of discouraging people from responding” to West Africa, said Farnon, an infectious disease consultant and Temple University faculty member who advised the World Health Organization on the outbreak. “It’s only a minority of people returning from these areas who will develop symptoms and develop Ebola disease.
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