US building Ebola quarantine center in Kenya for Americans amid outbreak

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Some experts criticize White House approach and say not allowing Americans to return to US hurts treatment efforts

The Trump administration is building a quarantine and treatment center in Kenya for Americans affected by the Ebola outbreak, instead of bringing them home.

The White House on Wednesday confirmed that the US was setting up a facility in Kenya for Americans to quarantine after Ebola exposure in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

“The facility is designed to provide access to high-quality care for Americans who would need to quickly get out of DRC and quarantine without the risks of a lengthy transport back to the US,” a White House official told the Guardian.

The center will also treat Americans who contract Ebola, the official said – “including critical care needs, though each case will be evaluated for forward transport for more advanced care as appropriate in order to maximize patient outcomes”.

The official did not clarify whether that further transport would be to the US or to Europe, where other Americans have been taken for quarantine and treatment. The official also did not clarify if Americans were allowed to return to the US if they did not want to go to Kenya.

The US has banned green card holders who recently travelled in DRC, Uganda and South Sudan from returning home, and other recent travellers to these three countries are also banned from entering the US.

“It is shocking to me that the administration is looking to prevent Americans from coming home to receive the proven world-class care that our taxpayer-funded biocontainment and treatment units are equipped to provide,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health.

“There are profound ethical concerns with this approach,” she added. “Without adequate plans for the safe quarantine of exposed individuals and prompt isolation of those who become infected, I fear these facilities could amplify the spread of the virus. The prospect of not being able to come home for safe and effective care may create disincentives for people to disclose having been exposed, which could drive cases underground, and cause the virus to spread even more.”

Americans responding to previous outbreaks – whether they were caring directly for patients or organizing the logistics of contact tracing and safe burial teams – knew that if they fell ill, they could return home to receive some of the best medical care in the world.

Without those assurances, and with the prospect of being indefinitely prevented from returning home to friends and family, US experts are much less likely to volunteer now.

“That’s basically telling any American health worker who might go and work on the effort to contain this outbreak that if they get sick, they can’t come home,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International and former executive director of the USAID Covid-19 taskforce as well as a former leader in the 2014-2015 USAID Ebola response. “It disincentivizes people from going. In 2014, we faced this exact scenario – cases coming back to the United States – and we fought really hard not to put a travel ban in place because we knew that would ultimately be counterproductive to the goal of ending the outbreak.”

The risks of transportation are extremely low if a person is not symptomatic, and the US has extensive experience evacuating people who have been exposed to and test positive for Ebola or other contagious pathogens.

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