[ARABNEWS] A TV news cameraman treated for Ebola was ready to go home Wednesday, the fifth patient transported from West Africa to recover at a US hospital, as President Barack Obama...Dreams of My Sainted Father
's new Ebola "czar" got to work trying to pull together a coherent national response to the deadly disease.
Two nurses remain hospitalized after catching the virus from a Liberian man who died at a Dallas hospital. Because of their cases, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued more stringent safety guidelines this week and is working with states to spread them to health care workers across the country.
"Recovering from Ebola is a truly humbling feeling," American video journalist Ashoka Mukpo said in a statement Tuesday from the Nebraska Medical Center. "Too many are not as fortunate and lucky as I've been. I'm very happy to be alive." The virus has killed more than 4,500 people in West Africa, nearly all in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. Mukpo got it while working in Liberia as a freelance cameraman for NBC and other media outlets. He has been at the Nebraska hospital since Oct. 6, the second Ebola patient treated there.
The hospital said Tuesday that tests show Mukpo is now free of the virus and he would be allowed to leave its biocontainment unit Wednesday.
Debra Berry, the mother of Dallas nurse Amber Vinson, said Tuesday her daughter is "doing OK, just trying to get stronger" while being treated at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. Fellow Dallas nurse Nina Pham's condition has been upgraded from fair to good at the National Institutes of Health outside Washington.
At the White House, former adviser and veteran political operator Ron Klain was meeting with Obama and top aides in the Oval Office Wednesday afternoon to officially start his new Ebola duties.
Obama named Klain last week to take charge of coordinating the array of federal agencies dealing with Ebola in the US and helping to tackle the crisis in West Africa.
Resisting pressure to ban travel from the Ebola-stricken countries, the B.O. regime was tightening rules in an effort to ensure that all arrivals from the three nations are screened for the disease.
Under restrictions taking effect Wednesday, air travelers from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea must enter the United States through one of five airports doing special screenings and fever checks. A handful of people had been arriving at other airports and missing the checks.