There Are Now More Than a Dozen People Being Monitored for Ebola in the U.S.

None of those being monitored have tested positive for the viral disease.

All are connected to an unidentified American who had been in Africa with the group Partners in Health and who returned to the U.S. last week after he came down with Ebola. He is currently in critical condition at a government hospital in Bethesda, Maryland.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the aid workers being monitored were brought back on non-commercial planes and volunteered to self-isolate during a 21-day monitoring period, the incubation time for the Ebola virus.

Some aid workers are staying near hospitals with special isolation units in Bethesda, Atlanta, and Omaha, Nebraska. A CDC spokeswoman said Wednesday said the two most recent people are considered low risk and will go home for the 21-day monitoring period.

In addition to aid workers, a mother and child in Amarillo, Texas, who recently came back to the U.S. from Liberia, are being monitored after the child developed a fever.


As of March 15, there were more than 24,700 cases of suspected, probable and confirmed Ebola infections worldwide. More than 10,000 deaths have occurred since the outbreak began in December 2013.

Sierra Leone is planning another three-day, countrywide shutdown March 27 through 29 to ferret out Ebola cases, remind people how to protect themselves from the disease and control its transmission.

In what Sierra Leone hopes will be a final push to zero cases, Alfred Palo Conteh, head of the country’s Ebola response, said Wednesday that the government will again ask residents to stay in their homes for three days. The government has done this before, and some experts said it was unexpectedly effective in providing information about to control the disease.