Nearly two dozen people are being checked for the Ebola virus in Washington state after traveling to African countries where infection rates have risen in recent months, health officials said Friday.
The state placed 23 “individuals under surveillance” for the deadly disease for 21 days after they returned to the US from Guinea and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the state health department said in a press release.
According to the press release, the virus has begun to devastate parts of N’Zérékoré prefecture in Guinea – a country where thousands of people died from the disease between 2014 and 2016 – along with North Kivu province in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are now requiring airlines to collect and provide contact information for all passengers who were in those two countries, health officials said.
But officials stressed that Washington state residents are still at “low risk” of contracting the virus.
Much more deadly than the coronavirus, Ebola killed at least 11,300 people in Guinea, which has a population of 12 million, during the Ebola crisis started in 2014.
In February, Guinea stated that the Ebola virus had become an epidemic after three people died and four others were hospitalized.
People with the virus often have a fever, aches and pains, along with vomiting, diarrhea, and other symptoms.