The U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, stated this Thursday that Washington's top priority regarding the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is to prevent the virus from reaching U.S. soil, and announced that concrete measures have already been taken to achieve this, including rerouting a flight headed to Detroit.
In statements reported by C-SPAN, Rubio was candid: "We care about Ebola. We don't want anyone to die or be affected by Ebola, but our number one priority will always be to ensure that it does not reach the United States. That is our number one obligation."
The official established a clear hierarchy of objectives: "The number one goal is to ensure that Ebola never reaches the United States. The number two goal is to do what we can to help the people of the DRC and neighboring countries to prevent its spread."
Rubio mentioned that on Wednesday night, a flight headed to Detroit Metropolitan Airport was diverted due to existing entry restrictions.
According to information from WXYZ News, it was an Air France flight coming from Paris that was diverted to Montreal because it had on board a passenger from the DRC who should not have boarded under the current regulations. The passenger showed no symptoms and was removed from the plane in Montreal, after which the rest of the passengers continued on to Detroit.
The measure is a order from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued on May 18, which suspends for 30 days the entry into the U.S. of foreigners -non-citizens and non-permanent residents- who have been in the DRC, Uganda, or South Sudan in the preceding 21 days.
Rubio also announced that the U.S. has offered to fund the first 50 clinics ready to respond to the outbreak, and acknowledged that the alert should have come sooner: "I wish we had started this two weeks ago, that the alert had been issued earlier."
The Secretary of State reiterated his criticisms of the World Health Organization (WHO), which he had previously described as "a bit late" in identifying the strain of the outbreak: "The WHO unfortunately has not done well in the world. I believe it failed miserably during COVID, covering for China."
Nonetheless, he left the door open for collaboration: "We will work with anyone who wants to solve that problem."
The Director-General of WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, responded that Rubio's criticisms may stem from a "lack of understanding" of the International Health Regulations.
Adhanom explained that the organization was alerted on May 5 about an unknown disease in Mongbwalu (Ituri), that the initial tests were negative due to the rarity of the strain, and that confirmation came on May 14 after samples were sent to a laboratory in Kinshasa, 1,700 km away.
The outbreak, caused by the Bundibugyo strain - the rarest of the virus, with no approved vaccine or specific treatment and a fatality rate between 25% and 40% - was officially declared on May 15 and elevated to Public Health Emergency of International Concern on May 16.
Rubio estimated the number of confirmed cases in the outbreak to be around 600 at the time of his statements, although other sources report different figures.
The virus has spread to Kinshasa, Goma, Kampala (Uganda), and border areas of South Sudan, and controlling the outbreak faces serious obstacles: over 100 armed groups are operating in Ituri, and there are more than 273,000 internally displaced persons according to the UN.
The U.S. issued travel alerts at Level 4 - "Do not travel" - for the DRC, Uganda, and South Sudan, and at Level 3 for Rwanda, as part of a response that Rubio described as primarily focused on protecting the American people.
The WHO warned that the outbreak is potentially much larger than what has been detected so far, and assessed the risk as high at the national and regional levels, although it clarified that it does not reach the threshold of a "pandemic emergency."
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