As President Obama lambasted state governors on Tuesday for instituting mandatory quarantines for humanitarian workers who deployed to West Africa, a member of his own Cabinet was finalizing plans to isolate all returning service members for 21 days.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Wednesday ordered all U.S. military service members returning from the Ebola response mission to undergo “controlled monitoring,” meaning they will be isolated on military facilities and monitored for symptoms for 21 days.
The order supports a recommendation by the Joint Chiefs of Staff made earlier this week that all deploying troops be quarantined when they return home.
The order is far more restrictive than Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations that travelers from West Africa and even health care workers who treated Ebola patients submit to symptoms monitoring by public health officials but not remain isolated.
It also appears to contradict the Pentagon’s own declarations that troops, who are conducting engineering, construction and logistics operations, are not considered to be at risk because they have no physical contact with local residents.
Obama said Monday that decisions on quarantines should not be based on “fears” but on science, which indicates that Ebola spreads only through contact with the bodily fluids of a symptomatic patient.
The Army earlier this week isolated the first group of soldiers returning to a post in Vicenza, Italy, including Maj. Gen. Darryl Williams, commander of U.S. Army Africa.
Williams told the Stars and Stripes newspaper that the move took him and his group by surprise.
Obama on Tuesday said it was “critical” that the Ebola epidemic be stopped at its source and noted that CDC guidelines recommending active monitoring — but not isolation — of returning health care workers is part of an effort to encourage them to continue volunteering for the dangerous job of treating patients in West Africa.
But he also said the rules don’t apply to military service members, who are conducting a different mission.
“They are … not treating patients. They are not there voluntarily, it’s part of their mission that’s been assigned to them by their commanders and ultimately by me,” Obama said. “When we have volunteers who are taking time out from their families, from their loved ones and so forth, to go over there because they have a very particular expertise to tackle a very difficult job, we want to make sure that when they come back that we are prudent, that we are making sure that they are not at risk themselves or at risk of spreading the disease, but we don’t want to do things that aren’t based on science and best practices.”
