Macau announced today the strengthening of health screenings for travelers arriving in the Chinese special administrative region who have traveled from or transited through the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) or Uganda due to an Ebola outbreak.
In an official statement, the Macau Health Bureau (SSM) pledged to “further reinforce the health screening of individuals coming from or who have made stopovers in areas affected” by the current viral outbreak. The health authority maintained that the territory “has always possessed a robust mechanism for monitoring infectious diseases and border quarantine” and concluded that “the immediate risk posed by the virus in Macau remains low.”
On Sunday evening, the Center for Health Protection (CHP) in neighboring Hong Kong also announced an upgrade to health controls for travelers arriving at its local airport from the African continent. Despite implementing the lowest of their three existing alert levels, Hong Kong authorities emphasized that no case of Ebola has ever been recorded in the territory and that no direct flights exist between Hong Kong and either DR Congo or Uganda.
The CHP consulted with the aviation and travel sectors and discovered that travelers originating from these specific regions generally choose to make a flight transfer in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia.
Read more about this topic: Hong Kong strengthens screening from Africa amid Ebola outbreak (with video)
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the situation a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on Sunday, which is its second-highest alert level, though it determined the outbreak does not meet the criteria for a pandemic emergency.
The current outbreak has already caused at least 88 deaths out of 336 suspected cases in the DR Congo, including within Goma, a major eastern city currently controlled by the M23 anti-government armed group. In the Ugandan capital of Kampala, authorities have reported two confirmed cases with no apparent epidemiological link, involving individuals who had recently traveled from the neighboring DR Congo.
The WHO warned that the high positivity rate of initial samples and the confirmation of cases in Kampala and Kinshasa point toward a potentially much larger outbreak than what is currently being detected by local health surveillance. The organization also highlighted that, unlike other historical strains of Ebola, there are currently no approved treatments or vaccines specifically targeting the Bundibugyo virus strain responsible for this surge.
The global health body urged neighboring states and the international community to coordinate containment efforts closely while stressing that no country should close its borders or impose restrictions on international travel and trade.
