About two dozen people are being monitored 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 has put 23 “people under control” of the deadly disease for 21 days after returning to the United States from Guinea and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the state health department said in a press release .
The virus has begun to ravage 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 the Congo. of the Congo, according to the press release.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention requires airlines to collect and provide contact information for all passengers who were in those two countries, according to health officials.
But officials stressed that Washington state residents still have a “low risk” of contracting the virus.
Ebola, which is far more deadly than the coronavirus, killed at least 11,300 in Guinea, which has a population of 12 million, during the Ebola crisis that began in 2014.
In February, Guinea said the Ebola virus had become an epidemic after the deaths of three people and four others hospitalized.
People with the virus often have fever, aches and pains, diarrhea and other symptoms.