A confidential report issued Monday states that 71 people who came from nations where the Ebola virus has struck have been caught trying to enter the United States illegally between January and July, Dr. Elizabeth Lee Vliet, a preventative medicine physician, said Tuesday on
Newsmax TV's "America's Forum."
In addition to Central and South America, which is getting all the attention due to the surge of unaccompanied minors flooding the U.S. border, Vliet said people from China, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and the Middle East have also been gaining entry to the U.S.
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Citing the World Health Organization,
The New York Times reports that since March, more than 1,600 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone have contracted Ebola — more than half have died — marking the largest outbreak on record.
"Nigeria has reported three probable cases and one suspected case, including that of a Liberian man who traveled there and died on July 25," according to the Times.
Dr. Kent Brantly, a U.S. Ebola patient, was transported from Liberia to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta over the weekend and a U.S. missionary who contracted the virus alongside Brantly will be brought to the U.S. on a later flight, Reuters has reported.
Vliet said that 800 of the 1,200 people infected in the current outbreak in West Africa have died and more than 100 medical personnel treating the patients have also been infected, raising concern that Ebola may be an airborne disease.
"Even those people taking extreme precautions are still at risk because the medical people caring for the patients in West Africa are using the precautions that we've been told are effective," she said. "My concern is that studies from Canada suggest that we may be too premature in saying that there is no aerosol or airborne transmission. What the Canadian studies have shown is that it's suspected that there may be, but we don't know. There's a lot we don't know about this particular virus and so to categorically say there is no airborne transmission when the medical professionals treating patients in West Africa are becoming ill in spite of using the precautions, it raises red flags."
She said the U.S. government is both withholding information from the public and releasing false reports.
A ninth patient in New Mexico has been identified, and quarantined, with tuberculosis, yet "what was announced to the press and to the public was, oh, we're quarantining the New Mexico center because there are two cases of chicken pox," Vliet said. "Well that's a significant distortion in the medical risk based upon how they presented it to the public."
She noted that Border Patrol agents and their families have been infected with tuberculosis, Swine Flu, lice, scabies and chicken pox.
Dispersing the illegal immigrants throughout the U.S., and into the public school systems, without thorough medical screenings is "a medical public health risk to the communities that are unsuspecting," she said.
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