As Congress held hearings on the Ebola threat on Thursday, elected officials from Florida continued to push their own solutions, pushing for travel bans on impacted nations and calling for more leadership from the White House on the issue.
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said on Thursday that he backed having an Ebola czar, a proposal floated by U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., among others.
If theres a will, theres a way, Nelson said on Thursday. This person should be at least temporarily based in a White House war room with direct authority from the president -- someone like former Surgeon General Richard Carmona, who has the requisite medical background and who served in that position under former president George W. Bush.
Breaking with a president from his own party, Nelson was an early backer of imposing a temporary travel ban on Ebola-impacted nations, an idea that is gaining momentum in both chambers.
One supporter of the travel ban is Nelsons fellow senator from the Sunshine State. U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a member of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, who offered his take on the Ebola threat in an op-ed published by CNN on Wednesday. In the op-ed, Rubio backed a travel ban on African nations impacted by the disease.
We need to prevent the growing crisis in West Africa from leading to more cases in the United States, Rubio wrote. The recent announcement of increased entry screening of those traveling from affected countries by Customs and Border Patrol at select points of entry in the United States is a good but, frankly, overdue first step. However, it will not be enough, and the State Department should institute a temporary ban on new visas to non-U.S. nationals seeking to travel to the United States from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
At the other end of Capitol Hill, a member of the GOP leadership controlling the U.S. House launched a bill to create a travel ban. U.S. Rep. Dennis Ross, R-Fla., the senior deputy majority whip, unveiled the Contain Ebola and Stop the Epidemic (CEASE) Act on Thursday. Rosss bill will stop commercial flights flying to and from West African nations impacted by Ebola until the threat from that disease is over.
President Obamas comments stating that its highly unlikely Ebola would reach our shores were completely wrong, Ross said on Thursday. Now, he is ignoring Congresss letter requesting the restriction of air travel from countries in West Africa that are experiencing an Ebola outbreak. This is why I plan to introduce legislation that bans air travel, and also suspends the issuance of visas for travel, to the United States from countries affected by the Ebola outbreak. These bans will be lifted when the outbreak is declared to be contained and no longer a threat. I feel that discontinuing air travel is an obvious first step solution to combating Ebola in the United States. Its frightening that our commander in chief presumes that Ebola will not spread in the United States and is only taking delicate precautions. Ebola has a death rate of 50 percent. How can you ignore this fact, and take a gambit with American lives by allowing people to travel to and from countries where the virus is quickly spreading?
Now that two of our health care workers have contracted the virus I am putting my foot down, Ross added. This legislation is a more serious approach to preventing Ebola from further infiltrating our homeland. Airport security screening is a complete smoke and mirror approach to the virus and Americans arent buying it. I urge my colleagues to sign onto this legislation and hope Speaker Boehner will quickly call Congress back into session to debate my legislation.
From his perch on the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, U.S. Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., weighed in on the Ebola threat and called for more training for health-care professionals and backed a travel ban.
I am deeply concerned about the threat Ebola poses to public health, Bilirakis said. We must continue to provide diligent oversight of the response and preparedness efforts. The priority must be ensuring the safety of Americans, and stopping this outbreak in West Africa and around the world. In order to guarantee no further importation to the U.S., the Ebola virus must be immediately eradicated in West Africa.
We must have a robust, consistent, and comprehensive strategy to protect the public and fight this devastating crisis, and all options including a potential temporary travel ban to the affected areas should be considered, Bilirakis added. The federal government must coordinate with local governments and health care providers to ensure our doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals have the training and resources available to adequately diagnose and treat infected patients. We must also ensure members of the armed forces and first responders have the resources they need.
U.S. Rep. Ander Crenshaw, R-Fla., called for Obama to show more leadership on the issue and supported a travel ban on impacted African nations.
The growing Ebola crisis in Western Africa, new cases here in the United States, in combination with the virus impact to other countries warrants the highest level of attention across all governments, Crenshaw said. At home, its clear we are not ready and have to do more to stop this deadly disease cold. This is a real threat to our nations health and security; quicker response and better procedures are needed.
Moving forward, President Obama must assure a worried nation that Ebola will spread no further, Crenshaw added. That means a clearer flow of information and stronger display of leadership about how American lives, including front-line health care workers, will be protected. Among the steps he should consider is a temporary travel ban from Western African countries to the United States.
Concerns about the possibility of this sort of outbreak prompted Congress to provide more Centers for Disease Control (CDC) funding than requested, Crenshaw continued. And, this morning, hearings on Capitol Hill have begun. Congress will continue to assess the response to date and how it can be improved, and the House stands ready to act if legislation is needed to counter Ebolas growing threat. We pray for the safety of the U.S. military that has been called into action to stem Ebolas tide and we keep all who are fighting against the ravages of this horrific disease front and center.
During a U.S. House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations hearing on Ebola, U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., called for more federal funding on medical research, including sending more to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).This is a wake-up call for America, Castor said during the hearing. We cannot allow NIH funding to stagnate any longer.
Castor cited reports that Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the NIH, said budget cuts to his organization were hurting efforts to find a vaccine for Ebola.
We will only save lives if we can robustly fund medical research in America and keep America as a world leader, Castor said.
Closer to home, news emerged that a Frontier Airlines plane carrying a nurse who was infected with Ebola made a stop in Fort Lauderdale 24 hours after leaving Dallas.
The Fort Lauderdale stop was one of four others the plane made after leaving Dallas, according to a flight-monitoring website, flightaware.com.
Frontier Airlines said it immediately grounded the plane after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) notified it of the Ebola-infected passenger. CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said the woman should never have boarded the flight, but nobody at the agency stopped her despite her reporting a temperature of 99.5 Farenheit.
The woman flew from Cleveland to Dallas/Fort Worth Monday. The next day, the plane flew back to Cleveland and then to Fort Lauderdale. The plane was then flown back to Cleveland, then to Atlanta, then back to Cleveland before it was grounded.
The CDC has already contacted all passengers who flew on the same flight as the Ebola patient.That wasnt enough for Gov. Rick Scott who, on Thursday, called on the CDC to contact passengers who were on that airplane that day on other flights.
The CDC announced that they are contacting those passengers on the airplane with nurse Amber Joy Vinson, and I am asking them to expand their contacts today to include all passengers traveling on that plane for the full 24 hours after Ambers flight, Scott said in a statement released on Thursday morning. Within 24 hours of Ambers flight with a low-grade fever, we know the plane made five additional stops including one into and one out of our Fort Lauderdale Airport.
The CDC has already admitted that they have been slow to respond to developing cases of Ebola, and we do not want to take any risk of Ebola coming to Florida, Scott continued. Their immediate action to contact all these passengers today is essential to explaining any potential health risks to themselves and their family. I want all Florida passengers to have as much information as possible directly from the CDC to ease any of their fears and understand any way they could have made contact with the disease.
We continue to hope we will never have a case of Ebola in Florida, but unfortunately, we have seen from the CDCs own admission that they have failed to get ahead of this diseases spread in America to date and we will do everything we can in Florida to get the CDCs full engagement to protect our Florida health care workers, our citizens and our visitors, Scott added. Yesterday, we also requested the CDC conduct health care worker training with all Florida hospitals by conference call. Friday morning, I will meet again with our Florida Department of Health leaders and notify the public of what, if any, action the CDC has taken on our Ebola preparedness requests following that meeting.
Reach Kevin Derby at kderby@sunshinestatenews.com or follow him on Twitter: @KevinDerbySSN. Reach Tampa-based reporter Allison Nielsen via email at allison@sunshinestatenews.com or follow her on Twitter: @AllisonNielsen.
