The Trump administration has called on Europe to abandon the World Health Organization’s Ebola playbook and adopt its own rules, amid fears that fans arriving for the 2026 World Cup could bring the disease with them.
The State Department last week appealed to European countries to snub the WHO’s approach and apply tighter travel restrictions on people flying in from Central Africa, according to Axios.
“European countries must do their part to ensure this outbreak does not spread further,” a departmental official told the publication. “Action is required now.”
An outbreak of the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola that began last month in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda has led to more than 500 cases being confirmed and over 100 deaths.
This month’s World Cup is expected to bring between 5 and 7 million tourists to North America for the month-long tournament being co-hosted by the U.S., Canada and Mexico, the State Department estimates.
Among the 48 national teams taking part in the DRC soccer team, which is due to arrive in Houston, Texas, Thursday after the side spent 21-days training in a mandated isolation bubble in Belgium.
President Donald Trump is a long-standing opponent of the WHO, attacking its leadership and transparency during the Covid-19 pandemic at the tail-end of his first term, prompting him to withdraw the U.S. from the global alliance on the first day of his second.
Europe, however, has no such problem and takes the position that screening, testing and contact-tracing, as the body advises, are more effective means of keeping Ebola at bay than sealing borders, also claiming that the current risk of infection to the general public is “very low.”
The U.S. response to Ebola has led to protests in Kenya, where demonstrations have been held for days against the construction of a 50-bed quarantine center for Americans at an air base in Nanyuki.
On Tuesday when police dispersed protesters with tear gas and water cannons, with reports that at least one person had been shot.
Several U.S. citizens have been exposed to Ebola in Congo and Uganda during the current outbreak, six of whom have been moved to a medical center in Germany and another to one in the Czech Republic.
But Kenyans expressed anger at being expected to house Americans taken ill with a disease their country otherwise does not have, fearing the sick could bring the virus to their door and deter tourists from coming.
