By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter
SATURDAY, Oct. 18, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- President Barack Obama on Saturday asked Americans not to give way to panic over Ebola, and he repeated his opposition to a travel ban for flights from affected countries in West Africa.
In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama said that Ebola, "is a serious disease, but we can't give in to hysteria or fear - because that only makes it harder to get people the accurate information they need. We have to be guided by the science."
Some lawmakers have called for a travel ban, but Obama believes such a move would be counterproductive. "Trying to seal off an entire region of the world - if that were even possible - could actually make the situation worse," he said.
Obama's words come a day after he appointed Ron Klain, a former chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden and a trusted White House adviser, as Ebola "czar."
His role: to oversee the federal government's response to the small but anxiety-producing presence of the often lethal virus in the United States.
Klain has been out of public service since leaving Biden's office during Obama's first term. The White House said Klain would report to national security adviser Susan Rice and to homeland security and counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco, the Associated Press reported.
A lawyer, Klain also served as chief of staff for Vice President Al Gore.
Klain gained a reputation for skillful handling of high-stakes political challenges. For instance, he was the lead Democratic lawyer for Gore during the 2000 presidential election recount dispute, The New York Times reported.
On Thursday evening, Obama said "it may be appropriate for me to appoint an additional person [to oversee the Ebola response], not because they [federal health officials] haven't been doing an outstanding job, really working hard on this issue, but they are also responsible for a whole bunch of other stuff."
Obama said he was considering such a move "just to make sure that we are crossing all the t's and dotting all the i's going forward."
Obama's comments came after a Congressional subcommittee hearing where top federal health officials faced tough questions about their response to Ebola infections in the United States. The officials also defended their opposition to a ban on travelers from the West African nations of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the sites of the worst Ebola outbreak in history.
To date, there has been one death and two infections from Ebola in the United States. The deceased was a native of Liberia who became infected in his home country before arriving in Dallas last month to visit relatives. The two infections involved two nurses at the Dallas hospital who helped treat the Liberian man.
The Ebola outbreak in West Africa has killed nearly 4,500 people out of an estimated 9,000 reported cases, according to the World Health Organization.
Also Thursday, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it was widening its search for people who may have had contact with one of the nurses who treated Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian national and first patient ever diagnosed with Ebola in the United States. Nurse Amber Joy Vinson was part of the medical team that cared for Duncan at Texas Health Presbyterian Dallas, the focus so far of Ebola in the United States.
Vinson traveled by plane on Oct. 10 from Dallas to Cleveland to visit family members and returned to Dallas on Oct. 13. She said she had a slight fever before boarding the return flight to Dallas, but family members said she had appeared "remote and unwell" while in Ohio over the weekend, the Times reported.
The CDC said it was now tracking down passengers who took Frontier Airlines Flight 1142 from Dallas to Cleveland on Oct. 10. The agency had already been tracking passengers on her Oct. 13 flight back to Dallas.
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