The spokesperson for the Center for Disease Control’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, Kristen Nordlund, told The Blaze that the agency could not confirm they have a database of people who are arriving in the U.S. from West African nations affected by the deadly Ebola virus.
“Nordlund could not confirm if the CDC had a national database to track all persons who have arrived to the U.S. from West African nations that may have been exposed to Ebola.”
So who is keeping track of these folks?
Apparently, it is in the hands of the states.
Said Nordlund, “CDC would leave it up to each individual state to determine the procedure by which to track and deal with Ebola patients.”
In some cases, the agency has been invited to help out with Ebola patients, as was the case in Dallas, Ohio and New York. But the CDC merely makes recommendations.
“We put out our guidance and we put out what kind of monitoring we would suggest is needed. Some states have stricter guidance, while others can be a little less. It starts at the local and state levels and then the CDC is called in,” Nordlund explained.
However, the CDC’s own guidelines seem a bit fluid, to say the least.
The New York Post reported that the CDC had removed an informational poster on its website explaining that Ebola can be transmitted via a sneeze or saliva and replaced it with a poster that omitted that information.
According to figures reported by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the NYC Health and Hospital Corporation, 357 people were being actively monitored for the virus. That is triple the number of people monitored the previous week, which was 117 in New York alone.
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