US Borders Tighten Against Ebola As CDC Suspends Entry For Permanent Residents

South Sudan is also on high alert because it shares a border with the affected zones and sees a lot of cross-border movement. The Bundibugyo virus spreads through direct contact with infected bodily fluids, causing severe fever, weakness, and sometimes organ failure. The most dangerous part of this outbreak is that the virus has a massive incubation period. An incubation period is the time between when someone catches a virus and when they actually start feeling sick or showing symptoms. For this strain of Ebola, a person can walk around feeling perfectly fine for up to twenty-one days before the sickness actually hits. That means a traveler could catch the virus in Africa, fly through massive international aviation hubs in Europe or the Middle East, and land in a major American city long before a fever ever shows up on an airport scanner. To make matters worse, there is currently no widely approved vaccine or specific antiviral medicine to treat this exact strain. Because the stakes are so high, the CDC is using a specific legal power known as Section 362 of the Public Health Service Act. This law allows the government to outright suspend the introduction of people from foreign countries if allowing them in would create a serious danger of spreading a communicable disease. Previously, the border rules had a built-in exception that allowed Lawful Permanent Residents to bypass these types of emergency suspensions. The new rule strips that exception away entirely. The government argues that tracking, testing, and isolating potentially infected travelers takes an incredible amount of specialized medical resources and facility space. By blocking permanent residents who might have been exposed, the CDC can save its limited quarantine beds and contact-tracing manpower strictly for returning American citizens. U.S. citizens and U.S. nationals are explicitly exempt from this travel ban. The government acknowledges that American citizens have a fundamental constitutional right to enter the United States. However, federal officials decided that permanent residents often have deeper ties and make more frequent visits to their home countries, which statistically increases their risk of exposure during an international outbreak. Because this is considered an emergency situation involving foreign affairs, the CDC is bypassing the usual public comment waiting period to put the ban into action immediately.