Canada imposing quarantine measures on travellers from Ebola countries

The federal government's new Ebola restrictions require people deemed to be at high risk of carrying the disease to stay at home for 21 days, the incubation period of the virus. Photo: The Canadian Press

TORONTO — People coming to Canada from Ebola-affected countries — including returning health-care workers — will need to undergo a more formal 21-day monitoring period, the federal government announced Monday. And some will need to quarantine themselves in their homes for that time.

The policy requires people deemed to be at high risk of having contracted Ebola to stay at home or in “a facility” for the three weeks, which corresponds to the length of the disease’s incubation period.

The policy statement, pushed out after the end of the working day, does not specify what kind of facility that might be, or who would decide which of the options would apply to a particular case.

Dr. Gregory Taylor, Canada’s chief public health officer, has not granted an interview requested by The Canadian Press to clarify questions raised by the policy statement.

Rumours have swirled for some time that the federal government was considering strict quarantine rules for returning health-care workers, but multiple sources have said the idea met with considerable resistance from provincial governments.
There were concerns that treating returning health-care workers like disease carriers instead of people who had risked their own lives to help the world might deter others from volunteering to help in the response effort.

The new rules, which took effect Monday, create two classes of travellers: high risk and low risk.

These rules apply to people who are not evidently ill when they come into Canada, but might be incubating the disease. Anyone who is ill with symptoms consistent with Ebola would be isolated until testing determined if the person was infected.

Returning health-care workers aren’t automatically slotted into the high-risk category. Instead, the guidelines say local public-health authorities can decide on a case-by-case basis whether to require a returning medical worker to go into quarantine in their home or in a facility for 21 days.

The statement suggests that a health-care worker who had been exposed to Ebola after having a breach in their personal protective equipment may be considered high risk. Typically health-care workers who have experienced a risky exposure have been flown to their home country by air ambulance, though Canada has not yet had any such cases.

The policy applies to all travellers from Ebola-affected countries. But because Canada has stopped issuing visas to people from Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, in reality the policy will mostly apply to returning health-care workers and people who work for humanitarian aid groups.