13% of Ebola Victims Never Have a Fever

Another major flaw of airport fever screening for Ebola infection became apparent in an article reported in the New England Journal of Medicine  (NEJM) on October 16, 2014 (371, 14-81-1495) by the WHO Ebola response team.  It seems that 13% of people with Ebola infection do not develop fever.  Therefore, a national policy of screening for fever to prevent Ebola from entering the U.S. is fatally flawed.  Furthermore, the head of the CDC has said that the fever must be greater than 101.5 for the infected Ebola patient to shed virus.  Based on the article in the NEJM, this is obviously incorrect.  While it is probably correct to assume that the higher the fever the more virus particles the patient is carrying and shedding, it is obviously incorrect to say that shedding can not occur in patients with low or no fever.  It is time to get serious with Ebola prevention in the U.S.  The administration’s attempt to calm public fear simply has had the opposite effect—as we become more aware of the truth about Ebola and how it is transmitted the more we loose confidence that our government is taking this epidemic seriously.

As I have stated many times we have 2 excellent tools that work 100% of the time and are very low tech:  Isolate and Quarantine.  We must apply these tools today in a scientifically rigorous manner and leave the politics out of our Ebola policy.