Obama cancels Thursday travel to Rhode Island, New York to monitor Ebola response

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama cancelled a scheduled trip to Rhode Island and New York on Thursday to remain at the White House and monitor the government’s Ebola response.

The change in plans marks the second day in a row that Obama put off travel to attend to heightened concerns about Ebola in West Africa and the emergence of two cases in the United States.

Obama postponed fundraising and political campaign stops Wednesday that had been scheduled in New Jersey and Connecticut. Obama instead called a meeting of his Cabinet secretaries and top White House officials involved in the response to the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia and its repercussions in the U.S.

In his most urgent comments on the spread of the disease, Obama also sought to ease growing anxiety and fears in the U.S. in the aftermath of a second nurse being diagnosed with Ebola after treating a patient in a Dallas hospital. He said he had directed the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to step up its response to new cases.

“We want a rapid response team, a SWAT team essentially, from the CDC to be on the ground as quickly as possible, hopefully within 24 hours, so that they are taking the local hospital step by step though what needs to be done,” he said.

Participants in the meeting were a roster of Cabinet secretaries and top Obama advisers, including Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel, Attorney General Eric Holder, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey.

Even as he raised the potential for global contagion, Obama also stressed that the danger in the United States remained a long shot.

“Here’s what we know about Ebola. It’s not like the flu. It’s not airborne,” he said.

He made the point of noting that when he visited with health care workers who had attended to Ebola patients at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, he hugged and kissed them without fear of infection. “They followed the protocols, they knew what they were doing,” he said. “I felt perfectly safe doing so.”

Hours before Obama cancelled his trip, officials confirmed that a second nurse at a Dallas had tested positive for the virus after treating an Ebola patient who later died. The disclosure raised new fears regarding the exposure by other health care workers. Officials also revealed that the nurse was on a commercial flight the evening before being diagnosed.

Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives John Boehner said Obama should consider a temporary ban on travel to the United States from the West African countries afflicted by the virus and that the president should weigh other measures “as doubts about the security of our air travel systems grow.”

Administration officials have resisted a travel ban, saying that adequate screening measures are already in place — only once has an Ebola victim flown into the U.S. — and that a ban could hinder assistance to the afflicted.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee scheduled a hearing on the outbreak Thursday.

The Texas developments added a new domestic element to what has developed into an Ebola crisis in the West African countries of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. Obama has been pressing the international community to step up its assistance in combating the disease.

On Wednesday, Obama spoke by phone with British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President François Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. The White House said Obama stressed that the world must provide the finances and personnel needed “to bend the curve of the epidemic” and said it amounts to a “human tragedy as well as a threat to international security.”

He made a similar case to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday, the White House said.

Obama spoke after the White House conceded shortcomings in the response to the Liberian Ebola patient’s care.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest noted that CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden had declared that even one health care worker being exposed was unacceptable.

“So that is an indication that there were shortcomings,” Earnest said.

Asked how the nurse was able to fly to and from Ohio over the weekend, Earnest said, “It’s not clear what protocols were in place and how those protocols were implemented.”

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Associated Press writers Nedra Pickler and Matthew Daly contributed to this report.

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