Doctors Spar With Congress Over Ebola Worker Quarantine

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Bloomberg:

As members of Congress call for a mandatory quarantine of Ebola health workers returning from West Africa, doctors are pushing back, warning that the added burden could deter many from volunteering to fight the outbreak at its source.

 

The conflict highlights a rift between an anxious public fearful of the virus that has now been diagnosed in four people in the U.S., and medical aid groups who say their workers can monitor themselves and know how not to spread the disease.

 

There are currently no legal restrictions on health workers’ movements when they return to the U.S. after caring for Ebola patients, though at least one U.S. aid organization voluntarily quarantines its workers upon their return. That doesn’t go far enough, said lawmakers at a hearing in Washington today, who questioned whether scientists know enough about how the virus is spread to be confident they can protect the American public.

 

Quarantining health workers “sets a strong perimeter of defense to protect public health here in the United States while allowing for infectious-disease experts to gain a better understanding of this virus,” Representative Tim Murphy, a Pennsylvania Republican, wrote in an editorial yesterday in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “As we learn more, we can adjust these policies. But let’s start from the strongest line of defense and work our way down, not begin with the weakest line of public-health protections and scramble our way up.”

________

 

Like the doc who rode the subway and went bowling?