New Jersey spent $3M on Ebola monitoring

New Jersey’s health department has spent nearly $3 million to track people who traveled into the state from West African countries with high rates of Ebola.

Health officials have monitored a total of 641 people who arrived from Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia between October and March, according to a report by a local CBS radio station, WCBS 880.

More than a dozen were hospitalized because they reported symptoms similar to Ebola, which healthcare officials have noted can be similar to those of the flu or malaria.

{mosads}The costs of Ebola monitoring, which became mandatory for West African travelers into the U.S. when fears about the disease peaked last fall, have put a sizable dent in state budget coffers. Minnesota lawmakers previously lamented that they spent $2 million on monitoring.  

New Jersey’s Republican Gov. Chris Christie sparked a national furor last fall when he mandated that all healthcare workers who treated Ebola patients be quarantined after arriving in his state. He later loosened the policies after his testy exchange with one of the quarantined nurses went viral.

New Jersey’s Democratic Senate President, Steve Sweeney, said he hopes to offer more Ebola funding to the state health department during this year’s budget process.

“When you have something that is as dangerous as that, that enters your state, just like this country, you can’t ignore it,” Sweeney told CBS.