Minnesota’s two Democratic senators are miffed that their state’s largest airport has been left out of the Obama administration’s updated Ebola screening.
Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton, along with Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, sent a letter to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention head Dr. Tom Frieden on Monday, asking the agency to apply enhanced screening measures for Ebola to the state’s largest airport, Minneapolis-St. Paul International.
The White House announced last week that it would begin implementing more intensive Ebola screening for passengers traveling from West Africa, particularly Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, but only at five U.S. airports. The CDC has said that the five airports — New York-JFK, Chicago-O’Hare, New Jersey-Newark, Washington-Dulles and Atlanta-Hartfield Jackson — account for 94 percent of all passengers daily who enter the U.S. from the affected countries.
A Minnesota CDC official said that 99 percent of Minneapolis-St. Paul’s passengers will have been screened, but that’s still not good enough for Minnesota’s Senate delegation.
“While 99 percent is a comforting statistic, the Ebola experience in Dallas, Texas has taught us that even one case of Ebola in our state or country can have devastating consequences,” the trio wrote. Texas’s two largest airports, in Dallas and Houston, are also not on the CDC’s enhanced screenings list, although several Texas Republicans requested last week that they be added as well.
“Our request is that the CDC conduct heightened screenings of all passengers with Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea in their travel history when they arrive” at Minneapolis-St. Paul, Gov. Dayton, Sen. Klobuchar and Sen. Franken wrote. “At a a minimum, we ask that the CDC do additional screenings…if [passengers] have not already been screened twice,” once when leaving West Africa and once upon their arrival in the country.
The group noted that Minnesota has one of the largest Liberian populations of any state and said that including Minnesota’s airport, the 16th largest in the country, would “impact a small number of passengers and have little cost.”
The enhanced screening procedures include non-contact body temperature checks as well as extensive questionnaires targeting whether a passenger has been exposed to another person with Ebola. (RELATED: New CDC Ebola Screening Wouldn’t Have Detected First US Case)
The procedures won’t, however, be able to detect travelers who may have Ebola, but haven’t yet begun to show symptoms such as a temperature. When the first man who died of Ebola in the U.S., Thomas Duncan, flew into the country, authorities believe he wasn’t contagious and not yet displaying the disease’s symptoms.
Just one health care worker who treated Duncan has contracted Ebola so far. (RELATED: Ebola Strikes Again In Texas: Female Nurse Tests Positive)