Tougher US screening for Ebola being considered - Obama

President Barack Obama has announced the US government would consider increased screening for the Ebola virus at airports both in the US and in West Africa.

Mr Obama made the announcement after being briefed in Washington by Dr Thomas R Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mr Obama called the fight against ebola “a top national security priority”, but did not specify how screening procedures would be changed. Dr Frieden said officials would explore a variety of options.

The US president called for more help from other countries in fighting the outbreak in Africa.

In Dallas, Texas, where an Ebola patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, remains in critical condition despite taking a trial drug, officials acknowledged their city is on edge as it waits to learn whether those he stayed with and medical workers became infected while caring for him.

According to the CDC, the maximum incubation period for the virus is 21 days, but symptoms typically appear in eight to 10. Mr Duncan, a 42-year-old Liberian who apparently contracted the virus before flying to the US, began complaining of symptoms on September 24th and was hospitalised in isolation on September 28th. The 10-day threshold, therefore, will pass by the middle of this week.

"We are going to be having our fingers crossed and our hands folded in prayer this next week," said Mayor Mike Rawlings of Dallas. Thus far, none of the 10 people who officials say are at high risk - three who shared an apartment with Mr Duncan and seven health care workers - have displayed any symptoms. An additional 38 people who are considered at lower risk also are being monitored by workers who check their temperature twice daily.

Some of those 38 are people who were with Mr Duncan while he was contagious, but apparently did not have direct contact with his skin or bodily fluids, which is the CDC’s standard for the high-risk label. They include the daughter of the woman Mr Duncan was visiting, who cared for him before calling an ambulance, and one of the four people who spent five days last week in the contaminated apartment where he grew ill.

Mr Duncan remained in critical condition yesterday at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital. The hospital announced that doctors began administering doses of an experimental drug called brincidofovir on Saturday.

The drug, being developed by the biotechnology company Chimerix, is being tested against various viruses in clinical trials. Chimerix announced that the Food and Drug Administration agreed to make the drug available to treat ebola on an emergency basis.

It has never been tried before in people infected with ebola, and there is not any data showing it works even in animals. But test-tube experiments in government labs suggest the drug might be effective, the company said.

Supplies of another experimental drug, ZMapp, are at least temporarily exhausted, according to Frieden. Another American infected with ebola, Ashoka Mukpo (33), a freelance cameraman working for NBC in Liberia, arrived in the US yesterday. He will be treated at the biocontainment unit at Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, designed for extremely contagious patients, NBC reported.

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