First the mandatory Ebola quarantine went into effect at JFK airport in New York yesterday. Then it was New Jersey following New York with mandatory Ebola quarantine at Newark and La Guardia airport. Now, in Rahmville, Chicago, airports there are instituting a mandatory 21-day quarantine for medical workers returning from west African countries hit by Ebola. Better late than never I guess. Of course, there are already hundreds of medical workers who treated patients in the Ebola infected countries in west Africa who have already come back to this country, and may be carrying the disease with them. So this is little more than too little, too late. Most of the passengers who come to Chicago from west Africa usually go to O’Hare International Airport in Chicago.
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| Mandatory Ebola quarantine now in Illinois |
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And while the 33-year-old doctor notified authorities when he developed a fever and was quickly isolated at Bellevue Hospital Center, his own Ebola diagnosis prompted the governors of New York and New Jersey on Friday to impose a mandatory 21-day quarantine for medical workers returning from the countries hit hardest by the epidemic. Illinois later in the day imposed similar restrictions.
That action all but overshadowed the day’s good news: In Washington, a smiling Dallas nurse named Nina Pham hugged President Obama in the Oval Office after being declared Ebola-free by doctors and leaving the National Institutes of Health. And in New York, physicians said Spencer remained in stable condition, while officials fanned out to track down anyone he might have encountered in recent days.
The new quarantine rules, instituted late Friday by New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), came amid a deepening debate across the country over whether federal restrictions need to be tightened for anyone arriving in the United States from the Ebola-stricken countries of West Africa.