Americans Who Responded To Ebola Outbreak Are Quarantined In Kenya, Despite Court Order

Several American aid workers who responded to the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are isolating at a facility in Kenya that the country’s highest court blocked in May.

The seven Americans are part of a disaster assistance response team with the evangelical Christian humanitarian group Samaritan’s Purse, said Franklin Graham, its president and CEO, in an emailed statement.

They don’t have any symptoms but are being quarantined by the Kenyan government for 21 days, he said.

The Ebola outbreak in the Congo is caused by the Bundibugyo virus, for which there are no licensed vaccines or drugs.

The transfer of the humanitarian workers to the Kenyan facility became public days after the Trump administration began using federal transportation law to bar any American who’s been in the Congo from traveling home on commercial flights unless they spend 21 days in another country. That’s the most stringent travel restriction the U.S. government has ever applied during a disease outbreak abroad.

The decision to bar citizens from immediately returning home was based on a new risk assessment by the U.S. government, which showed increased spread of the virus closer to the Congo’s capital, Kinshasa.

Brian Christine, the assistant secretary for health at the Health Department, signed an updated Title 42 order Monday, which highlighted the increased risk in Congo. Title 42 allows the federal government to prevent individuals from entering the country in order to stop the spread of communicable diseases.

The seven humanitarian workers are the first Americans known to have been housed at the facility, which the U.S. government set up in Laikipia Air Base in Nanyuki, more than 100 miles north of the Kenyan capital of Nairobi. Reuters first reported they were sent there.

Kenya’s High Court ordered the suspension of building that facility in late May and later held the Kenyan health minister in contempt for not following the order. The court still must issue a final ruling on the litigation, brought by a Kenyan group dedicated to defending the country’s constitution, that spurred the order. Two people died after being shot during street protests against the facility, the BBC reported in June.

The State Department did not respond to a request for comment on the status of the legal challenge surrounding the facility. But the department said the Americans "voluntarily moved to the Kenya facility for precautionary monitoring and isolation” and that the decision was made out of an abundance of caution.

“Kenyan authorities have authorized their movement into the facility under the observation of the U.S. Public Health Service clinicians,” the State Department said.

The seven who are at the facility in Kenya “are being housed in large military tents in a fenced-in graveled area, sleeping on military cots, and their food is being provided by the U.S. military,” Graham said in the statement.

Graham said he spoke with the aid workers Friday morning to “thank them, and encourage them while they wait to come home.” He expressed gratitude “to God for the incredible men and women who have been fighting Ebola on the front lines.”

It was not immediately clear if the seven people are thought to have been exposed to the virus.

Another American working for Samaritan’s Purse who contracted the virus is being treated in Germany after arriving there on Monday.

The person is the second American to be sent to Germany for treatment after Peter Stafford, a missionary doctor working for the humanitarian group Serge was diagnosed with Ebola in May and successfully treated in Berlin. He was discharged in June.

The Trump administration has faced criticism from infectious disease experts for not bringing Americans diagnosed with Ebola or exposed to it home to be isolated and treated in the nation’s specialized treatment units, such as the one in Nebraska where more than a dozen Americans were sent after being exposed to hantavirus on a cruise ship this spring.

The U.S. spent more than a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars developing the National Emerging Special Pathogens Training and Education Center and the Regional Emerging Special Pathogen Treatment Centers, which sit idle as Americans diagnosed with or exposed to Ebola are cared for abroad, said Ronald Nahass, the president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, in a statement Friday.

“Our government cannot accept the national security benefits of these heroes’ sacrifices while simultaneously pretending it has no duty of care to bring them safely home,” Nahass said about American health workers responding to the Ebola outbreak.

Already the third largest Ebola outbreak ever, it’s outpacing the response due to the difficulty of reaching people in the affected areas, where there’s an ongoing conflict, the World Health Organization said Thursday.

The Congo has reported more than 2,100 cases and 828 deaths, according to the WHO.