U.S. and British insurance companies have begun to write Ebola exclusions into their policies for hospitals, event organizers, airliners, and other businesses vulnerable to disruption from the disease.
As a result, new policies and renewals will become more expensive for firms looking to insure business travel to West Africa or to cover the risk of losses from Ebola-driven business interruptions (BI).The cost of insuring an event against Ebola, for example, would likely be triple the amount of normal cancellation insurance — if the venue was in a region not known to be affected by the virus.
NEWARK --New Jersey has decided to release a nurse who was fighting an order that forcibly quarantined her after she returned from Africa where she treated Ebola patients.
The release was announced this morning after Kaci Hickox, hired a lawyer to sue over her mandatory 21-day quarantine. Shortly before the decision by the New Jersey Health Department, the nurse said she hopes "this nightmare of mine and the fight that I’ve undertaken is not in vain.”
CONAKRY -- The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, arrived in Guinea's capital Conakry on Sunday to see first hand how the global response is failing to stop the deadly spread of Ebola in West Africa.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power arrives at the 69th United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York, September 24, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Mike Segar
Power, who will also visit Sierra Leone and Liberia, said she hopes to gain a better understanding of which resources are missing so she can push other countries to offer more help.
"We are not on track right now to bend the curve," Power told Reuters. "I will take what I know and I learn and obviously provide it to President Obama, who's got world leaders now on speed dial on this issue."
"Hopefully the more specific we can be in terms of what the requirements are and what other countries could usefully do, the more resources we can attract," she said....
Hundreds of Americans have flown to Liberia in the past few days. Thousands more are on the way.
American troops setting up field hospital in Liberia --NYTimes
This Ebola corps is a collection of doctors, nurses, scientists, soldiers, aviators, technicians, mechanics and engineers. Many are volunteers with nonprofit organizations or the government, including uniformed doctors and nurses from the little-known U.S. Public Health Service. Most are military personnel, snapping a salute when are assigned to their mission — “Operation United Assistance.” It does not qualify for combat pay, only hardship-duty incentive pay, which is about $5 a day — before taxes....
With at least 4,500 people dead, public-health authorities in west Africa and worldwide are struggling to contain Ebola. Borders have been closed, air passengers screened, schools suspended. But a promising tool for epidemiologists lies unused: mobile cell phone data.
When people make mobile-phone calls, the network generates a call data record (CDR) containing such information as the phone numbers of the caller and receiver, the time of the call and the tower that handled it—which gives a rough indication of the device’s location. This information provides researchers with an insight into mobility patterns...
French scientists are developing a diagnostic tool that works similar to a home pregnancy test and can quickly identify the virus through a tiny fluid sample.
CEA's Ebola testing kit uses strips to rapidly identify the presence of the virus in fluid samples.--Courtesy of France's Atomic Energy Commission
France's Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) is teaming up with European pharma company Vedalab to roll out a user-friendly testing system than could diagnose Ebola in less than 15 minutes, the agency said in a statement. The kit, dubbed "Ebola eZYSCREEN," includes a hand-held device that reads small samples of blood, plasma or urine to detect the virus, and shows results in stripes through a window on the tool.
New York City Council District 7 Community Liason Fidel Malena hands out flyers about Ebola risk near the apartment building of Ebola patient Dr. Craig Spencer, in New York, Friday, Oct. 24, 2014. Spencer remained in stable condition while isolated in a hospital, talking by cellphone to his family and assisting disease detectives who are accounting for his every movement since arriving in New York from Guinea via Europe on Oct. 17. (AP Photo/Richard Drew) | ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK -- As news of New York City's first confirmed Ebola case spreads through the city, New Yorkers -- even those at the hospital where the patient is being treated, who rode the same subway lines he traveled on and who live in his building -- are remaining markedly calm....
Zachary Hasselbring, a New York University student riding the A train, ...said "I think everybody's overreacting a bit," he said. "It's blown out of proportion."
Workers and volunteers face unease after flying to virus epicenters
Dr. David Schnabel, epidemic intelligence service officer with the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, works with database training of Ministry of Health staff at the Bo District Surveillance Office in Sierra Leone in August. (Gbessay Saffa)
"David Schnabel, a former Army doctor who lives in Baltimore, said he hasn’t talked much with people he doesn’t know about his five-week trip to Sierra Leone. Schnabel, who was working for the CDC in the hard-hit Bo District, returned on Sept. 29.
“'I can tell you I did not broadcast where I had been before or after I returned to strangers,” said Schnabel, who trained Sierra Leoneans on Ebola safety protocols rather than caring for patients. “I understood the emotional response to Ebola. To protect myself from any stigma, I consciously was careful who I told.'”
WASHINGTON --In nine days of enhanced screening at five major American airports of passengers from West African countries hit by Ebola, only three of the 552 arrivals had high temperatures, according to Department of Homeland Security statistics. The passengers went through seconary screening and none of them was found to have Ebola, according to a DHS document.
The figures were in a chart contained in DHS statement describing the agency's role in helping counter Ebola with
enhanced screening at airports. The chart covered the period from October 11 when the screening started, through
NEW YORK --The governors of New York and New Jersey announced Friday afternoon that they were ordering all people entering the country through two area airports who had direct contact with Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea to be quarantined.
The announcement comes one day after an American doctor, who had worked in Guinea and returned to New York City earlier in October, tested positive for Ebola and became the first New York patient of the deadly virus.
“A voluntary Ebola quarantine is not enough,” said Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York. “This is too serious a public health situation.”
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