The US State Department on Tuesday strongly urged Americans to not travel to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), South Sudan or Uganda amid mounting worries over a deadly Ebola outbreak.
The department gave the three Central African countries its highest travel advisory — “Level 4: Do Not Travel” — and also urged citizens to “reconsider travel” to neighboring Rwanda.
The announcement came a day after US health authorities announced enhanced airport screenings for travelers from outbreak-hit areas and temporarily suspended some visa processing.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the risk to the US homeland remained low, but was working to evacuate an American doctor who contracted the virus and six others for monitoring from the DRC.
German officials said Tuesday that they were prepared to receive the ill doctor.
Non-US passport holders who traveled to Uganda, the DRC or South Sudan in the last 21 days would be restricted from entering the United States, the CDC said.
It also said it was stepping up efforts to assist the DRC with technical experts.
No vaccine or treatment has been proven for the strain of Ebola at the center of this latest outbreak.
US officials are dodging questions about how cuts to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) may have hampered monitoring efforts and may be hampering the response.
The CDC stressed it was working with international partners, and the State Department said it was mobilizing $13 million in aid.
US President Donald Trump said he was “concerned” about the outbreak, but that he understood it to be “confined right now to Africa.”
In the last half century, some 15,000 people are believed to have been killed by various strains of the virus, which can have a fatality rate as high as 90 percent.
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