Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA), the Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce’s Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee criticized the Center for Disease Control for making “monitoring fevers and relying on people self-reporting” as the crux of their strategy for combatting the Ebola virus on Thursday’s “Kelly File” on the Fox News Channel.
“I’m troubled by their [the CDC’s] continual belief, as with the White House, as well as saying a travel ban would be a problem, quarantine shouldn’t be there, telling people they shouldn’t travel. They don’t agree with that yet. And I’m troubled by all that. Monitoring fevers and relying on people self-reporting is still the crux of their containment and surveillance efforts, and for something that is this deadly, even though, granted, only a couple people have it in this country, we don’t want anybody to have this and suffer from this. So it bothers me that that is still their position” he said.
Murphy also criticized officials for allowing nurse Amber Vinson to fly when she had a fever because her temperature was below the CDC’s risk threshold “There’s also a New England Journal of Medicine study that says [in] about 13% cases, the fever is not high, when the person has Ebola. So just using that as criteria alone, plus the CDC has changed that actual temperature level of which they consider it significant, and when Mr. Duncan came to the hospital in Texas he was also below that cutout score for the fever” he stated.
According to Duncan’s medical records, which were released to the Associated Press, “a chart showed Duncan did not arrive [emphasis added] with a fever but left with one,” at the end of his four hour visit.
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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