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 Darrell Issa, a California Republican who is a constant critic of
Democrat Obama’s administration, said the response had been inept,
characterized by over-confidence and ill-considered procedures to
protect U.S. healthcare workers at home and military personnel
deployed to help the worst-hit West African nations.
"Any further fumbles, bumbles or missteps ... can no longer be
tolerated," Issa told a hearing of the House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee that required lawmakers to return to
Washington from the campaign trail.
The federal government’s Ebola response has emerged as an issue in
congressional election campaigns across the country. On Nov. 4,
Republicans will have an opportunity to take control of the Senate
from Democrats. The Republicans already control the U.S. House of
Representatives.
Republicans have criticized the administration’s response by trying
to tie Democrats to an unpopular president and Ebola fears.
Meanwhile, vulnerable Democrats have increasingly signaled openness
to restrictions on travel from West Africa.
 White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters that he did not
see much of the hearing chaired by Issa, dismissing what he called
partisan attacks. “It does seem that most of the criticism was
registered by somebody who struggled to pronounce the name of the
virus,” Earnest said.
At Friday's hearing, the administration also came under fire over a
gap in regulations that allow people returning from either Liberia,
Sierra Leone or Guinea - where Ebola has killed at least 4,877
people - to resume normal routines before knowing whether they have
the virus.
The fourth U.S. case, diagnosed on Thursday in New York City, is a
doctor who treated Ebola patients in Guinea. He was hospitalized
less than a week after returning to the United States via Belgium.
Defense Department witnesses said at the hearing that returning
troops will be monitored for 21 days, the maximum incubation period
for the virus, as they return to the United States and resume their
normal routines. The military's monitoring period had previously
been 10 days.
Ebola's first appearance on U.S. soil last month in a Liberian
visitor to Texas, Thomas Eric Duncan, led to a series of public
health missteps. Duncan died on Oct. 8 and two nurses who treated
him were infected. On Friday, health officials declared them both
free of the virus.
To date, Republicans have led public appeals for the White House to
impose a travel ban on the three West African nations. But Obama has
resisted on advice from health officials who say Ebola poses no
major threat in the United States and that a ban could make it
harder to track travelers from the region.
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Instead, the administration has rolled out a new safety protocol to
protect U.S. healthcare workers who care for Ebola patients, and
beefed up screening and monitoring procedures.
"Simply having those thermal scans and interviews at the five
airport hubs isn't going to satisfy people who are concerned about
minimizing the risk," said Stephen Morrison of the Centers for
Strategic and International Studies.
At Friday's hearing, lawmakers from both parties also expressed
interest in imposing new mandatory standards for protective gear,
training and education at U.S. hospitals.
The hearing was mostly cordial, but included a few sharp jabs. Issa
accused Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC), of giving "false information" about
the dangers of infection and the safety of treatment protocols that
failed to protect the nurses.
"We have the head of the CDC, who's supposed to be the expert, and
he's made statements that simply aren't true," Issa said. Frieden
was not among the hearing's four government witnesses. A CDC
spokesman said Frieden and the CDC have been "open, honest, and
transparent from the very beginning of the Ebola epidemic".
Rabih Torbay of the humanitarian group International Medical Corps
told lawmakers that the current response by the United States and
other countries could contain the West African outbreak, the worst
on record, within four to six months.
(Additional reporting by Gabriel Debenedetti and Roberta Rampton;
Editing by Karey Van Hall, Jonathan Oatis and Grant McCool)
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