CDC ends Ebola quarantine watch 3 weeks too early

(NaturalNews) Texas health officials as well as others with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have ended a 21-day quarantine and observation period for dozens of people suspected of being exposed to the United States' first domestically diagnosed Ebola patient, and while scores more continue to be monitored, the watch period for this first group likely ended weeks before it should have.

According to Reuters, 43 persons who had been in contact with Patient Zero -- Liberian national Thomas Eric Duncan -- "were cleared overnight [October 20] of twice-daily monitoring after 21 days of showing no symptoms, the state health department said, while another 120 were still on watch lists."

The end of monitoring is likely to ease some fairly widespread anxiety about the disease, which has a 90 percent mortality rate, in the U.S., though an earlier Natural News report by editor Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, quoted a World Health Organization study which found that Ebola incubation periods could last up to twice that long -- 42 days -- in a small percentage of patients.

Real incubation period is double what CDC says

Adams wrote:

A jaw-dropping report released by the World Health Organization on October 14, 2014 reveals that 1 in 20 Ebola infections has an incubation period longer than the 21 days which has been repeatedly claimed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

The WHO report, which can be found here, says:

Recent studies conducted in West Africa have demonstrated that 95% of confirmed cases have an incubation period in the range of 1 to 21 days; 98% have an incubation period that falls within the 1 to 42 day interval. WHO is therefore confident that detection of no new cases, with active surveillance in place, throughout this 42-day period means that an Ebola outbreak is indeed over.

As Adams explained, that means that, while 95 percent of Ebola cases fall within the 21-day incubation period, 3 percent can be infected without showing symptoms for up to 42 days, which is double what the CDC has routinely reported as the only incubation period (21 days).

So, a fraction of those currently being released from the monitoring program could still be infected with Ebola, according to the WHO's own figures. So why doesn't the CDC continue to have these people monitored?

Also, the WHO is admittedly "alarmed" by some governments' quick determination that suspected virus carriers are so quickly pronounced not infected:

WHO is alarmed by media reports of suspected Ebola cases imported into new countries that are said, by government officials or ministries of health, to be discarded as "negative" within hours after the suspected case enters the country.

Such rapid determination of infection status is impossible, casting grave doubts on some of the official information that is being communicated to the public and the media. [emphasis added]

"In other words, WHO is telling us that all those public pronouncements by government health authorities are meaningless," Adams wrote. "An Ebola infection determination cannot be made in mere hours, it turns out. In fact, as WHO explains, a suspected case of Ebola must be observed and tested for 48 hours before any degree of certainty can be reached about the Ebola infection status."

Cases multiplying rapidly

Some lawmakers are not satisfied. They continue to press the Obama Administration for a travel ban to and from the affected countries in West Africa, but so far President Obama has refused to do so. These lawmakers contend that such restrictions are the only good way to prevent the spread of the virus (again) to the U.S.

That's important, because the WHO report also concluded that Ebola is spreading beyond control in the three most afflicted countries: Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone:

In Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, new cases continue to explode in areas that looked like they were coming under control. An unusual characteristic of this epidemic is a persistent cyclical pattern of gradual dips in the number of new cases, followed by sudden flare-ups.

WHO officials have said 1,000 people a week are becoming infected, and WHO has warned that that figure could rise to 10,000 per week by the end of the year.

Sources:

http://news.yahoo.com

http://www.naturalnews.com

http://www.who.int

http://abcnews.go.com

http://science.naturalnews.com