Amid an outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the US is set to make it mandatory for air passengers entering the country to furnish an attestation saying they have not been to the DRC in the last 21 days.
The report says that the new CDC rule will take effect starting November 3. The Ebola outbreak in DRC has killed more than 4,000 people out of over 9,000 confirmed cases in the country. Reuters reported it first citing a memo from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that they accessed.
“It’s preposterous to suggest that just because someone was holidaying in Uganda, which by the way has no cases of Ebola, is reason enough to drag us into a conversation about Ebola in Nigeria,” and Ugandan government spokesman told AFP. Nigeria and Kenya have also been affected. Nigeria said on Tuesday that the active case in the country was imported from Uganda, sparking outbreak fears in Uganda.
The November 3 memo would mark further tightening of Ebola screening by US authorities amid the worsening situation in DRC. The law was extended to also include US citizens in July.
When the Ebola outbreak first started earlier this year, the CDC in May made a rule that prohibited entry of passengers into the US if they had been to the DRC in the last three weeks.
