By Misti Crane
The Columbus Dispatch • Saturday November 1, 2014 5:50 AM
[link to www.dispatch.com]
Nurses, doctors and other health-care workers who return to Ohio after tending to Ebola patients will face a mandatory 21-day home quarantine under Ohio Department of Health rules issued yesterday.
The state’s new protocol is stricter than federal recommendations and adds Ohio to a handful of states, including New York and New Jersey, that have taken a step that some public-health experts have said is overkill.
The new protocol released yesterday also calls for more-stringent monitoring of any travelers coming from the three most-affected countries in western Africa. Those travelers are to be monitored twice daily for fever and other symptoms related to Ebola. Local public-health officials also could institute more restrictions on those people, based on their evaluation of an individual.
Ohio’s plan does allow for exceptions for quarantined health-care workers, based on individual assessments.