WHITE HOUSE SUPPORTS CDC GUIDELINES FOR CIVILIANS, EXPLAINS DIFFERENT TREATMENT FOR U.S. TROOPS

NEW YORK TIMES                                                              Oct. 28, 2014
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Tuesday said that new Ebola guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were “sensible, based in science” and would help keep Americans safe while not discouraging volunteers from traveling to West Africa to battle the disease at its source....

In a study for the New England Journal of Medicine, a team of experts had traced the disease to the village in Guéckédou, in southeastern Guinea, by reviewing hospital documents and speaking to those involved.

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CDC   WASHINGTON                                                    Oct. 28, 2014

The CDC has released its October report on on the Ebola outbreak in West Affica.

 The updated data in this report were compiled from situation reports from the Guinea Interministerial Committee for Response Against the Ebola Virus and the World Health Organization, the Liberia Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, and the Sierra Leone Ministry of Health and Sanitation. Total case counts include all suspected, probable, and confirmed cases as defined by each country. These data reflect reported cases, which make up an unknown proportion of all actual cases and reporting delays that vary from country to country.

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http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm63e1028a1.htm?s_cid=mm63e1028a1_e

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE SITUATION IN A RURAL LIBERIAN HEALTH CLINIC

NEW YORK TIMES                                                                  Oct.28, 2014
By Sheri Fink, MD

SUAKOKO, LIBERIA --
"...What level of care is possible for a disease with no cure being treated in wooden huts in the middle of a forest? How do medical workers prioritize which patients and tasks to focus on when they cannot do everything they were trained to do? Will their decisions determine who lives and who dies? And how would they even know?

Ms. Gaemai Sayon, center, survived Ebola but lost her husband and their infant son to the virus. The child died in her arms while she was delirious from the disease. Credit Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

'“You always want to do more, but it has to be balanced with what’s possible, with what makes sense for the context you’re working in,” said Dr. Pranav Shetty, the medical director at the center operated here by International Medical Corps.

ASSOCIATED PRESS                                 Oct. 28, 2014
  GENEVA-- The Swiss agency that regulates new drugs said Tuesday it has approved an application for a clinical trial with an experimental Ebola vaccine at the Lausanne University Hospital.

In this picture provided by the World Health Organization, a package of vials of the first shipment of the experimental vaccine VSE-EBOV is opened at the Geneva Cantonal hospital on Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2014. The World Health Organization (WHO) welcomes the donation by the government of Canada of 800 vials of an experimental candidate vaccine, VSV-EBOV, against Ebola virus disease. Clinical safety trials with this experimental Ebola vaccine have already begun in healthy human volunteers in Mali, the United Kingdom and the United States after showing very promising results in animal research. . (AP Photo/WHO/Mathilde Missioneiro) 

Swissmedic said the trial will be conducted among 120 volunteer participants with support from the U.N. World Health Organization. The experimental vaccine is to be initially administered on healthy volunteers who will be sent as medical staff to fight the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.

REUTERS                                          Oct. 28, 2014
By Colleen Jenkins and Doina Chiacu

A Texas nurse who contracted Ebola in the United States will be released from Emory University Hospital in Atlanta on Tuesday after being found free of the virus, the hospital said.

Amber Vinson was one of two nurses at a Dallas hospital who had treated Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian visiting Texas who died of Ebola on Oct. 8 and was the first patient diagnosed with the virus in the United States.

She was admitted to Emory's hospital for treatment on Oct. 15. The other nurse, Nina Pham, also was declared virus-free last week and left the Maryland hospital where she had been treated

UPDATE WITH DETAILS OF MARYLAND AND VIRGINIA MONITORING  (Scroll down)

ROUNDUP OF DEVELOPMENTS IN THE QUARANTINE  DISPUTE
NEW YORK TIMES                        Oct. 28, 2014

By SABRINA TAVERNISE, MICHAEL D. SHEAR and HELENE COOPER

The federal government on Monday tried to take charge of an increasingly acrimonious national debate over how to treat people in contact with Ebola patients by announcing guidelines that stopped short of tough measures in New York and New Jersey and were carefully devised, officials said, not to harm the effort to recruit badly needed medical workers to West Africa.

THE WASHINGTON POST                    0ct, 27, 2014
By Joel Achenbach, Brady Dennis and Lena H. Sun

The Ebola quarantine controversy has become a chaotic brawl involving politics, science and the law. The rules on quarantining health-care workers returning from West Africa are changing almost daily and varying according to geography and political climate.

The Pentagon announced Monday that Army personnel returning to their home base in Italy from Liberia will be held in quarantine for 21 days — even though none have symptoms of Ebola or were exposed to patients infected with the virus.

The military’s policy does not appear to track new guidelines announced Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which called for “high-risk” individuals and health-care workers without any symptoms to be directly monitored by state and local health authorities.

CNN                                                                                                   Oct. 27, 2014
By Barbara Starr

Army Major General Darryl A. Williams, commander of U.S. Army Africa, and approximately 10 other personnel are now in "controlled monitoring" in Italy after returning there from West Africa over the weekend, according to multiple U.S. military officials.

The American personnel are effectively under quarantine, but Pentagon officials declined to use that terminology.

There is no indication at this time any of the team have symptoms of Ebola.

They will be monitored for 21 days at a "separate location" at the U.S. military installation at Vicenza Italy, according to U.S. military officials. Senior Pentagon officials say it is not a "quarantine," but rather "controlled monitoring." However, the troops are being housed in an access controlled location on base, and are not allowed to go home for the 21 day period while they undergo twice daily temperature checks....

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lhttp://www.cnn.com/2014/10/27/politics/soldiers-monitored-ebola/

WASHINGTON--The  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention leader Dr. Tom Frieden announced changes to the U.S. response to Ebola and the guidance federal agencies are giving to state and local governments.

The new protocol stops short of the mandatory 21-day quarantines that some states have begun requiring. Instead, Frieden said, it relies on individual assessment and close monitoring. He also detailed several categories of risk among both airline passengers and the medical volunteers who he said have been doing "heroic work" in West Africa.

"High risk" individuals, Frieden said, include those who have cared for an Ebola patient and were accidentally poked by a needle or lacked protective gear. Those people, Frieden said, should isolate themselves in their homes and avoid all forms of mass transit and large gatherings.

AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT CONSIDERS SENDING HEALH WORKERS TO WEST AFRICA; MEANWHILE BANS VISAS FOR VISITORS FROM EBOLA-AFFLICTED COUNTRIES

THE GUARDIAN                                          Oct. 27, 2014

The Australian government is reconsidering its previous decision not to send health workers to West Africa. It seeks reassurances that any stricked Australian health workers can receive treatment in Western facilities.

The Australian Medical Association (AMA) president, Brian Owler, said the UK and US were building “state of the art” treatment centres in west Africa for international healthcare workers and he expected Australia would be able to strike an agreement.

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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/27/australia-seeks-hospital-back-up-volunteers-ebola-hit-countries

MELBOURNE HERALD                                Oct.  27, 2014

Meanwhile Immigration Minister Scott Morrison told Parliament that immigration had been suspended from West African Countries afflicted with Ebola and no new visas were being processed.

ROLL CALL                                     Oct. 27, 20144
By Melanie Zanona

Although Congress has publicly fretted over the threat of infectious disease pandemics, there have been few legislative attempts in the last two decades to address such health emergencies, leaving lawmakers with a limited set of policy options as they try to contain the Ebola outbreak.

Measures targeting deadly diseases have been largely crafted through the prism of bioterrorism threats, as opposed to naturally occurring outbreaks, such as swine flu and severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS.

“After 9/11 and the anthrax scares, there was starting to be a lot of attention and money being pumped into public health emergency preparedness and response, but by 2008, there started to be a downturn,” said Seth Foldy, associate professor of family and community medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin and former Milwaukee health commissioner. “It bumped up again after H1N1, but then the funding slide began to kick in. There hasn’t been much sustained and strategic attention on the issue.”

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THE ECONOMIST                  Oct.. 25, 2014

Detailed graphs on the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa and the healh systems in the affected countries.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2014/10/ebola-graphics?fsrc=rss&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews.

HOMELAND SECURITY NEWS WIRE                Oct. 27, 2014

U.S. and British insurance companies have begun to write Ebola exclusions into their policies for hospitals, event organizers, airliners, and other businesses vulnerable to disruption from the disease.

As a result, new policies and renewals will become more expensive for firms looking to insure business travel to West Africa or to cover the risk of losses from Ebola-driven business interruptions (BI).The cost of insuring an event against Ebola, for example, would likely be triple the amount of normal cancellation insurance — if the venue was in a region not known to be affected by the virus.

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http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20141027-insurance-companies-now-write-ebola-exclusions-into-policies-offer-ebolarelated-products

ABC NEWS                                          Oct. 27, 2014

by Josh Margolin

NEWARK --New Jersey has decided to release a nurse who was fighting an order that forcibly quarantined her after she returned from Africa where she treated Ebola patients.

The release was announced this morning after Kaci Hickox, hired a lawyer to sue over her mandatory 21-day quarantine. Shortly before the decision by the New Jersey Health Department, the nurse said she hopes "this nightmare of mine and the fight that I’ve undertaken is not in vain.”