Registered nurses at the University of California Medical Center hold signs as they stage a demonstration protesting inadequate Ebola preparedness at UC medical centers in San Francisco.(Photo: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images)
Two people who recently returned to Riverside County, Calif. from West Africa have been monitored for two weeks for Ebola as a precaution, health officials said Tuesday.
They are considered low-risk for developing the disease, according to the Riverside County Department of Public Health. Neither person shows symptoms of the virus and denies contact with anyone who had the illness during their travels. Riverside is a large county in the foothills and desert southeast of Los Angeles.
Both people, who are staying at their respective homes, have been cooperative with health officials. No family members are being monitored.
Barbara Cole, the county's director of disease control, declined to say where the two live in the county and what airport they arrived in. They are not healthcare workers, she said.
The county health department was notified by the California Department of Public Health, which was informed through the airport screening process that the two were returning from travel within the three affected countries in West Africa.
"We are doing active monitoring. We are contacting the individuals twice a day," she said. "Both individuals are well."
The monitoring takes place for 21 days.
LOW-RISK
Cole said the two are considered "low-risk" because there was no direct exposure to someone with Ebola.
"No contact with body fluid makes them low risk," she said. "But they were in an impacted country."
There are no Ebola cases in Riverside County or California, she noted.
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New guidelines from the Obama administration don't require quarantines for people at high risk of Ebola. But individual states have the ultimate authority. Georgia's governor announced a mandatory home quarantine for Ebola medical workers.
Dr. Cameron Kaiser, the county's public health officer, said the actions taken by local health officials follow protocols recently announced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Riverside County Supervisor John Benoit said he's "not in a position" to share information about the individuals being screened.
"There's certainly no room for panic here," he said. "Riverside County is very unlikely to be impacted."
Benoit said that unless someone has traveled to the three West African countries most affected by the virus, "the chances of someone in Riverside County contracting this is near zero."
County Supervisor Jeff Stone said the county is well-prepared and officials receive "almost daily" updates on the residents' status.
However, "I continue to urge the president to stop all travel from Liberia especially, where we see there are high incidences of Ebola."
Lee Rice, a spokeswoman for Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif., said she was not aware of any patient presented to the emergency department with Ebola-like symptoms. The Desert Sun has calls out to Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs and JFK Memorial Hospital in Indio.
WEST AFRICA OUTBREAK
Centered in West Africa, especially Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, there are 10,000 confirmed and suspected cases and nearly 5,000 deaths, according to the World Health Organization.
In the United States, there have been three confirmed cases of Ebola, one person monitored for recognized exposure and 91 people monitored for possible exposure, according to the CDC.
The first U.S. Ebola case was diagnosed at the end of September in a Dallas patient who had returned from heavy-hit West Africa, and two nurses who treated him tested positive for the virus. Both nurses have recovered and have been discharged from hospitals.
Ebola is spread through direct contact with blood or body fluids (such as saliva, vomit or sweat) of a sick person, infected animals or infected objects such as needles.
It can cause fever, severe headache, muscle pain, weakness, diarrhea, vomiting, abdominal pain and unexplained bleeding or bruising, according to the CDC, with symptoms sometimes mimicking the now in-season flu.
EBOLA DRILLS
Hospitals in the Coachella Valley, which includes Palm Springs, Calif., have been holding Ebola-preparedness drills and working to align with the latest federal recommendations for health care workers.
Congressmen Raul Ruiz (D-Palm Desert) and Jim Costa (D-Fresno) on Oct. 16 led 24 members of the California Delegation in issuing a letter to the state's top health officials as a way to ensure that California hospitals are taking the proper precautions to train and prepare staff.
"As an emergency medicine physician and as an expert in humanitarian disaster relief, I know how critical it is for our hospitals to be fully prepared to treat and contain potential Edola patients," Ruiz said in a statement. "Ensuring our health care professionals here in the Coachella Valley and across California are educated on the latest containment and treatment protocol is critical to preventing the spread of this virus and effectively treating those infected. With the proper preparations I am confident the U.S. health care system will fully contain any instances of Ebola infection."
Officials have advised against nonessential travel to the Ebola-stricken countries and created new passenger temperature-testing policies at five American airports that handle roughly 94 percent of travel to these West African nations.
Though Palm Springs International Airport was not included in the list, Thomas Nolan, the airport's executive director, has said they have a plan in place to respond to any aircraft reporting a situation of contagious disease.
"Contagious diseases are nothing new to airports if you remember the SARS and swine flu over the last decade or so," he said. "We don't evaluate how intense the situation may be. We just react to a request by a pilot that may have a situation."
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Ebola outbreaks worldwide
The World Health Organization estimates that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has killed more than 4,900 people.
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SOURCES: WHO, media reports and USA TODAY research. Note: Nigeria reported 20 cases and eight deaths, Senegal reported one case and no deaths. A separate outbreak of the Ebola virus, which is not related to the outbreak in West Africa, has killed 49 people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As of Oct. 25, 2014.
Janet Loehrke and Anne Carey, USA TODAY
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