3 Locals Being Monitored for Ebola Exposure Under State's Guidelines

County health officials described those individuals as showing no symptoms

Nineteen people were being monitored under California’s new Ebola guidelines for travelers returning from West Africa.

Out of those, three people were being monitored in San Diego County. County health officials described those individuals as showing no symptoms and being at low risk for contracting the Ebola virus.

The county defines low risk patients as those who have either visited an Ebola-affected country, been in the same room with a person showing Ebola symptoms, had contact with a person showing symptoms or traveled on a plane with someone with symptoms.

"So the individuals again are being monitored, which means we are asking them to take their temperature and check for signs and symptoms of Ebola twice a day, and we actually call then twice a day," said county Public Health Officer Wilma Wooten, MD, MPH.

They do not have any travel or movement restrictions, so they can carry on with their daily activities as normal. The monitoring will continue for 21 days.

All three were travelers, not health care workers, in West Africa, so they have had no contact with someone who has been diagnosed with the deadly disease, as far as county health officials know.

When asked why a public notification was not put out when they started monitoring the patients, Wooten said, "[There] was not a need to make that a public announcement because these individuals do not have Ebola. They've not been exposed to Ebola."

She said health authorities expect to monitor one or two people arriving in California from Guinea, Sierra Leone or Liberia everyday.

Now state health officials are recommending a 21-day quarantine for anyone who treated Ebola patients in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia within the last 21 days and had direct contact with an Ebola patient.

The final decision to whether to quarantine will be left up to local officials.

"In public health, our job is to protect the people of California and prevent the spread of disease, and we have to balance that with the rights of individuals," said Dr. Ron Chapman with the California Department of Public Health (CDPH).

The monitoring system will determine if a person is at a "high risk" or "some risk.” For those at a low risk, there may be more freedom for how they are monitored. This could even mean being quarantined at home for that time period and being watched by health officials.

The CDPH plans to post data on its website every Friday showing the number of people it is monitoring.

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