CLAYTON COUNTY, Ga. — Ebola screenings are now underway at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
The CDC announced the screenings began midnight Saturday.
Those screenings started at Atlanta’s airport and Dulles in Washington, D.C., and screenings in Houston start overnight.
Doctors say the screenings are one step in containing the spread of Ebola, ahead of the World Cup and summer travel, Channel 2’s Candace McCowan reports.
School’s out and it’s the first full week of travel for many, including for Rylan Campbell’s family headed on a mission trip.
“My brother and mom are about to go to east Africa for 14 days,” Campbell said.
They won’t be in an area of concern.
The CDC announced U.S. citizens who have been to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda or South Sudan must now return through Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson or Washington Dulles Airport for health screenings.
Travelers who have been in those countries in the past 21 days will be taken to a screening area, where they’ll answer a questionnaire about their travel history, their temperature will be taken and those with symptoms will be evaluated.
“The next steps would potentially be quarantining and or testing based on their risk level,’ said Dr. Dhaval Desai, with The Atlanta Internists.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, more than 115 deaths appear to be Ebola related. The virus can cause a person to bleed to death, and this strain has no vaccine.
For now, foreign visitors and green card holders from those countries have been blocked from coming into the U.S.
With the World Cup just weeks away, including a match with Congo, Emory Professor Dr. Lindsay Busch says the most important steps to prevent the spread start in Africa.
“A lot of the international involvement right now is in large part what we need to be emphasizing,” Busch said.
She said the risk to the American people is still very low.
This Ebola strain is the most recently discovered of those that infect humans. It also has a lower mortality rate than what we saw come to the U.S. back in 2014.
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