US to funnel travelers from Ebola-hit region through 5 airports

NEW YORK - The United States ratcheted up its safeguards against Ebola on Tuesday, requiring travelers from three countries at the centre of an epidemic in West Africa to fly into one of five major airports conducting enhanced screening for the virus.

Restrictions on passengers whose trips originated in Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea were announced by the US Department of Homeland Security and due to go into effect on Wednesday. The precautions stop well short of the travel ban sought by some US lawmakers to prevent more Ebola cases in the United States.

Affected travelers 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, Atlanta, and Chicago's O'Hare international airports, officials said. "We are working closely with the airlines to implement these restrictions with minimal travel disruption," Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said in a statement.

"If not already handled by the airlines, the few impacted travelers should contact the airlines for rebooking, as needed." Johnson said those airports account for about 94 per cent of travelers flying to the United States from the three countries, noting that there are no direct, nonstop commercial flights from Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea to the United States.

"We currently have in place measures to identify and screen anyone at all land, sea and air ports of entry into the United States who we have reason to believe has been present in Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea in the preceding 21 days,"Johnson said.

Washington-based trade group Airlines for America, or A4A, noted that under 150 people per day travel to the United States from those three countries and about 6 per cent of them, some nine people daily, have been arriving at airports other than the five airports with enhanced Ebola screening.

The group's member airlines are "cooperating fully" with the US Customs and Border Protection agency to reroute that 6 per cent of travelers to the five designated airports, A4A spokeswoman Jean Medina said.

The subject of travel measures may come up in White House discussions on Wednesday when President Barack Obama and his senior advisers meet for the first time with his newly appointed Ebola "czar," Ron Klain.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters Obama is"not philosophically opposed to a travel ban" on West Africa, and remains "open to it" if the scientists and public health experts advising him say it would help protect Americans. Earnest said those advising the president currently oppose such a ban.

The worst Ebola outbreak on record has killed more than 4,500 people, mostly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. Only three Ebola cases have been diagnosed in the United States: Liberian Thomas Eric Duncan, who died on Oct. 8 at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, and two nurses who treated him.

On Tuesday, the US National Institutes of Health outside Washington, D.C., upgraded the medical condition of one of the nurses, Nina Pham, to good from fair. She entered a special NIH facility in Bethesda, Maryland, for treatment last Thursday.

The other nurse, Amber Vinson, is being treated at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. Vinson's mother, Debra Berry, told ABC's "Good Morning America" programme her daughter is weak but recovering.

NBC freelance cameraman Ashoka Mukpo, who contracted Ebola while working in West Africa, is free of the virus and will leave the Nebraska Medical Center on Wednesday, the hospital said. Mukpo arrived in the United States on Oct. 6 for treatment.

He is the second patient to be successfully treated for Ebola at the Nebraska Medical Center, the hospital said on Tuesday, and the fifth treated in the United States to fully recover.

"Recovering from Ebola is a truly humbling feeling," Mukpo said in a statement.

"Too many are not as fortunate and lucky as I've been. I'm very happy to be alive."

"I was around a lot of sick people the week before I got sick," said Mukpo, the first US journalist known to have contracted Ebola.

"I thought I was keeping a good distance and wish I knew exactly what went wrong."