Texas Republican calls for Ebola quarantine facility at Dallas airport

Rep. Kenny Marchant (R-Texas) on Wednesday urged the Centers for Disease Control to set up a quarantine station at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

The Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) airport is one of the busiest airports in the world, as well as where the Liberian man who died from Ebola last week, Thomas Eric Duncan, landed.

{mosads}Marchant further requested that the CDC set up an Ebola quarantine facility at the George H.W. Bush International Airport in Houston. He noted that Toby Merlin, director of CDC’s Division of Preparedness and Emerging Infectious Disease, stated at a House Homeland Security Committee field hearing at the DFW airport last week that there “may” be space for such a facility but it was not staffed.

“As the third busiest airport in the world, and over five million international passengers every year at DFW, I believe that it is vitally important for the CDC to have a staffed facility at DFW. Moreover, as the final arrival destination for the first victim of Ebola in the United States, Thomas Duncan, this urgent need is ever more apparent,” Marchant wrote in a letter to CDC Director Thomas Frieden.

Marchant is not the only Texas lawmaker to call for enhanced Ebola screening procedures at the two airports. Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas) last week pressed the CDC and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to establish the same additional Ebola screenings of people arriving from West Africa at the Texas facilities as for the five other major airports nationwide.

The Obama administration announced last week that the following five airports would start implementing enhanced screenings: New York’s JFK International, Washington-Dulles, Newark, Chicago-O’Hare, and Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.