US temporarily bans green-card holders from entering country from African nations | Trump administration

U.S. authorities have temporarily barred green card holders from entering the country if they have traveled to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda or South Sudan in the past 21 days.

The order issued Friday is part of a growing effort to prevent the Ebola virus from entering U.S. borders. A previously announced travel restriction only prevented people without U.S. passports who had visited those countries from entering, but exempted U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents.

“H.H.S. [the Department of Health and Human Services] and CDC [the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] “We have determined that it is reasonably necessary to grant the CDC Director or other Secretariat designee the discretion to prohibit entry to certain lawful permanent residents in the interest of public health,” the order states.

The order adds that green card holders may have stronger ties to their families and communities outside the United States than U.S. citizens and nationals, “such that denying them entry is comparatively less burdensome.”

U.S. citizens returning from the DRC, Uganda or South Sudan now have a second point of entry into the United States, the CDC said, in addition to Washington’s Dulles Airport. The agency announced Saturday that it was expanding its enhanced Ebola screening to include Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport.

He highlighted the “resource constraints” of containing a quarantinable disease. Eighteen people are currently in a dedicated quarantine unit at the University of Nebraska after being released from the hantavirus-infected cruise ship MV Hondius.

“Containing quarantinable communicable diseases on U.S. soil is resource intensive, requiring specialized, isolated facilities with limited capacity,” he adds.

In a separate statement, the CDC said “applying this authority to lawful permanent residents for a limited period provides a balance between protecting public health and managing emergency response resources.”

In his remarks last week, Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said: “Our number one goal on Ebola…has to be that we can’t let this affect the United States. We can’t have a case of Ebola here.”

The entry ban for green card holders from the African region is for an initial duration of 30 days.

The World Health Organization has raised the risk of the rare Ebola Bundibugyo strain turning into a national epidemic in the DRC to “very high”. He declared the outbreak in the DRC and Uganda an emergency of international concern.

The WHO says 82 cases have been confirmed so far in the DRC, with seven confirmed deaths, 177 suspected deaths and nearly 750 suspected cases linked to the Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus.

On Saturday, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) declared that 10 African countries were threatened by the Ebola virus.

“We have 10 countries at risk,” said Jean Kaseya, director of the Africa CDC, citing Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Zambia.

It came as reports emerged that residents of a town at the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak in eastern DRC attacked and burned part of a health center where people are being treated for the virus, and 18 people suspected of being infected left the facility.

On Thursday, another treatment center in the town of Rwampara was burned down after family members were barred from collecting the body of a local man.

The bodies of people who have died from Ebola can be highly contagious and lead to further spread when people prepare them for burial and gather for funerals. The dangerous work of burying suspected victims is handled wherever possible by the authorities.

Authorities in northeastern DRC have banned wakes and gatherings of more than 50 people in a bid to curb the spread of the virus.