President Barack Obama will hold a Wednesday afternoon meeting with cabinet secretaries responsible for the containing the Ebola outbreak, and will delay a scheduled flight to a New Jersey fundraiser and campaign event.
Obama’s top message man, Dan Pfeiffer, announced the meeting shortly after officials admitted that a second person had contracted Ebola from the disease-carrying Liberian who was let into the country on Sept. 20.
“Later this afternoon, POTUS will convene a meeting at the White House of cabinet agencies coordinating the government’s Ebola response,” read Pfeiffer’s tweet.
Two nurses have contracted the deadly disease, forcing officials to identify and track more than 200 Americans.
They caught the disease from the Liberian, who was not checked for disease when he arrived at a U.S. airport.
Obama has strongly opposed travel bans on countries plagued with Ebola outbreaks.
Previously, Obama and his deputies that insisted that an Ebola outbreak was very unlikely, even as they refused to exclude travelers from the Ebola-stricken countries in West Africa.
“We have a public health infrastructure and systems and support that make an epidemic here highly unlikely,” Obama said Oct. 14.
“But obviously one case is too many, and we’ve got to keep on doing everything we can, particularly to protect our health care workers because they’re on the front lines in battling this disease,” he said.
Obama may be preparing to fire the current head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Thomas Frieden, who is increasingly being criticized for his handling of the Ebola crisis.