McCaul eyes suspension of visas from West Africa

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said on Sunday that officials should consider suspending visas from West African nations at the center of the Ebola outbreak

{mosads}McCaul said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that while there is talk about banning flights from Western Africa, he thinks officials need to “target the individuals themselves and look at the idea of potentially temporarily suspending the 13,000 visas that would be coming out of this region.”

McCaul’s comments followed news from Dallas early Sunday that a healthcare worker caring for Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian national who died in the U.S. last week, has tested positive for the deadly disease.

“Allowing healthcare workers to go in, because they have to contain the threat, but then when it comes to sort of the original population out of West Africa, I think until this gets under control that’s a measure that policymakers ought to be looking at.”

McCaul said enhanced screening at five major U.S. airports “will help a great deal.”

“We do screen at the point of origin, and then the point of entry within the United States in the top five airports where they would potentially come through. They are secondarily screened automatically if they come from the country of origin, and a Coast Guard medical officer will do an evaluation, including a temperature analysis. Now, this is a virus that incubates for 21 days, so that still leaves the possibility that somebody could actually still get through that process,” he said.

McCaul also said that it “may be wise” to send U.S. Ebola patients to specialized centers.

He said that designated facilities in Atlanta, Montana, Nebraska and the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., “have the expertise to deal with this very horrific virus.”

“And we had five cases. Mr. Duncan passed away, unfortunately, and now we have a new case,” he added. “And so I do think that’s important. And also it’s important we eliminate the threat at the source, and the source really is in Africa where it’s spreading like a wildfire.”