By Jeryl Bier.

Those looking for good news on the fight against Ebola will not find much encouragement from Marine Corps Gen. John F. Kelly, the commander of the U.S. Southern Command. As Jim Garamone of Department of Defense News reports, Kelly told an audience at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday that, if the disease reaches Central America, “it’s literally, ‘Katie bar the door,’ and there will be mass migration into the United States.” He also said with certainty that “there is no way we can keep Ebola [contained] in West Africa.”

“By the end of the year, there’s supposed to be 1.4 million people infected with Ebola and 62 percent of them dying, according to the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]…”

“So, much like West Africa, it will rage for a period of time,” Kelly said.

This is particularly possible scenario if the disease gets to Haiti or Central America, he said. If the disease gets to countries like Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador, it will cause a panic and people will flee the region, the general said.

“If it breaks out, it’s literally, ‘Katie bar the door,’ and there will be mass migration into the United States,” Kelly said. “They will run away from Ebola, or if they suspect they are infected, they will try to get to the United States for treatment.”

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: AP / Wilmot ChayeeEBOLA PATIENT’S DEATH RENEWS QUESTIONS ABOUT CARE

BY NOMAAN MERCHANT AND JOSH FUNK.

The death of the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States renewed questions about his medical care and whether Thomas Eric Duncan’s life could have been extended or saved if the Texas hospital where he first sought help had taken him in sooner.

Duncan died in Dallas on Wednesday, a little more than a week after his illness exposed gaps in the nation’s defenses against the disease and set off a scramble to track down anyone exposed to him.

The 42-year-old Liberian man had been kept in isolation since Sept. 28 at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, where a fevered Duncan first showed up days earlier and told the staff he had been in West Africa. Doctors initially sent him home. He returned after his condition worsened.

Dr. Phil Smith is the director of the biocontainment center at the Nebraska Medical Center, where an NBC News freelance cameraman is being treated for Ebola. He said getting early treatment is key to survival.

When a patient reaches the point of needing dialysis and respiratory help, as Duncan did this week, there may be little doctors can do.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Hospital bill for Ebola grows at $1,000 an hour in Dallas case

By Alex Wayne.

Caring for Thomas Eric Duncan, the Dallas Ebola patient, may cost as much as $500,000, a bill that his hospital is unlikely to ever collect.

Duncan is in critical condition at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, where he has been isolated since Sept. 28. He’s on a ventilator, has been given an experimental medicine and is receiving kidney dialysis, a hospital spokeswoman said Tuesday. His treatment probably includes fluids replacement, blood transfusions and drugs to maintain blood pressure. There’s also the cost of security, disposing of Ebola-contaminated trash and equipment to protect caregivers.

The bill may eventually total $500,000 including indirect costs such as the disruption to other areas of hospital care, said Dan Mendelson, chief executive officer of Avalere Health, a Washington consulting firm. Duncan’s care probably costs $18,000 to $24,000 a day, said Gerard Anderson, a health policy professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Duncan has been in isolation in the hospital for nine days so far. “If they recognize that he has no money they will clearly just write it off as charity care,” Anderson said in a telephone interview.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Vaccine may be only way to bring Ebola under control in West Africa

By Helen Branswell.

As West Africa’s Ebola outbreak continues to rage, some experts are coming to the conclusion that it may take large amounts of vaccines and maybe even drugs – all still experimental and in short supply – to bring the outbreak under control.

Embedded in that notion is the reality that the catastrophic epidemic may remain unchecked for months, given that these products haven’t yet been proven to be safe or effective in people, and won’t be available in significant amounts any time soon. Experimental Ebola drugs in particular will remain in scarce supply for a considerable time.

“It is conceivable that this epidemic will not turn around even if we pour resources into it. It may just keep going and going and it might require a vaccine,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told The Canadian Press in an interview.

“As the epidemic gets more and more formidable and in some cases out of control it is quite conceivable, if not likely, that we may need to deploy the vaccine to the entire country to be able to shut the epidemic down. That is clearly a possibility.”

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Reuters / Fabian BimmerEbola spread ‘unavoidable’ in Europe due to extensive travel – WHO

By RT.

The spread of Ebola in Europe is “unavoidable”, the World Health Organization said shortly after the contraction of four new cases was announced in Spain.

“Such imported cases and similar events as have happened in Spain will happen also in the future, most likely,” the WHO European director Zsuzsanna Jakab told Reuters.

On Monday scientists predicted that there was a 75 percent chance that Ebola would reach France by the end October and a 50 percent chance for the UK.

The most dangerous contributor to the spread is the behavior of the virus. Its symptoms catch people unawares and normally follow a 21-day incubation period, during which there’s literally no visible sign the person has contracted Ebola.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo Credit: APBy Susan Jones.

Both Homeland Security Secretary Secretary Jeh Johnson and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden said on Wednesday that 150 people a day arrive in the United States from Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea, the three West African countries that have been hit by the Ebola virus.

“When somebody travels from one of those three West African countries, even through a transit point (in Europe), we know where they’re coming from. So we’re able to track this. And we know that on average it’s about 150 passengers a day,” Johnson told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

“The number of travelers is relatively small. We’re talking about 150 per day,” Frieden told a news conference on Wednesday. He announced that questionnaires and temperature checks will begin at five major U.S. airports that handle “95 percent of all the 150 travelers per day who arrive from these three countries.”

One hundred-fifty passengers a day from West Africa works out to more than a thousand a week (1,050), 4,500 a month, and 54,750 a year.

Given the 21-day incubation period for Ebola and the 150 people coming in each day, that means that at any given time there could be 21 x 150 people in the U.S. who could be asymptomatically incubating Ebola, and who are free to wander around the country.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Obama: You Can’t Get Ebola ‘Sitting Next to Someone on a Bus;’ CDC: ‘Avoid Public Transportation’

By Brittany M. Hughes.

Speaking in a video message to residents of West African countries currently experiencing outbreaks of Ebola, President Barack Obama dispensed advice on how residents can avoid the disease, including:”You cannot get it through casual contact like sitting next to someone on a bus.”

At the same time, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is advising Americans who travel to the Ebola-stricken nations to “avoid public transportation.”

“First, Ebola is not spread through the air like the flu,” Obama said in the video released by the White House Thursday. “You cannot get it through casual contact like sitting next to someone one a bus. You cannot get it from another person until they start showing symptoms of the disease, like fever.”

Obama also said that “the most common way you can get Ebola is by touching the body fluids of someone who is sick or has died from it, like their sweat, saliva or blood, or through a contaminated item like a needle.”

The CDC, however, is advising aid workers and others who travel to countries currently experiencing Ebola outbreaks to “avoid public transportation” if they develop a fever or experience other Ebola-like symptoms while on their trip.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Ebola Could Be ‘World’s Next AIDS,’ CDC Director Warns

By MEGHAN KENEALLY.

Ebola is spreading with such speed that it could become a global pandemic to rival AIDS if action isn’t taken now, one of the U.S.’s top health officials has warned.

“In the 30 years I’ve been working public health, the only thing like this has been AIDS, and we have to work now so that this is not the world’s next AIDS,” Dr. Tom Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Wednesday.

Frieden spoke at a conference at the World Bank in Washington D.C. Those in attendance included a group of African leaders from countries where the virus has spread.

“Speed is the most important variable here,” Frieden said. “This is controllable and this was preventable. It’s preventable by investing in core public health services, both in the epicenter of the most affected countries, in the surrounding countries, and in other countries that might be affected.”

More ABC news videos | ABC Entertainment News

Read more from this story HERE.

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BP AGENT: NOTHING DONE TO SECURE BORDER FROM EBOLA, APPREHENSIONS AT 30%

By BREITBART TV.

Border Patrol Agent and National Border Patrol Council #3307 Vice President Chris Cabrera said that “nothing” has been done to secure the border in the event the Ebola virus spreads to Central America, and that the apprehension rate on the border was down to about 30% on Thursday’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto” on the Fox News Channel.

Cabrera said, “I agree with that 100 percent,” when asked whether he agreed with Marine Corps General John Kelly that there would be a “mass migration” to the US if the Ebola virus spread to Central America.

Then when asked if any steps had been taken to secure the border if such a migration occurred, he stated, “You know, actually, nothing has.”

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Premium TimesEbola: Another UN staff tests positive

By Premium Times.

The UN Secretary-General’s spokesperson, Stephane DuJarric, on Wednesday, confirmed that an international member of staff who works for UN Mission in Liberia, UNMIL, tested positive for Ebola Virus Disease, EVD.

Mr. DuJarric confirmed this while briefing UN Correspondents on Wednesday in New York.

He said “this is the second case of Ebola in the mission.

“An earlier probable case resulted in the death of a staff member on September 25.

“The Mission has, therefore, taken all the necessary measures to prevent possible further transmission within or outside the mission.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Getty‘Quarantine stations coming to 5 U.S. airports

By CNN.

One person has come to the United States and come down with Ebola here.

Authorities want to keep it that way.

To that end, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Wednesday beefed-up measures at five of America’s biggest, busiest airports aimed at preventing the deadly virus’ further spread.

While talk about preventing Ebola’s spread abounds everywhere from coffee shops to TV news, this intervention won’t affect a lot of people.

It applies only to about 150 people a day, by CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden’s estimate, arriving in the United States after having recently traveled from Ebolva-ravaged West African nations of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Read more from this story HERE.