[Global News] Obama vows more aggressive response to Ebola fears

[Towelie]

President Barack Obama vowed a more aggressive response to the handling of any new U.S. Ebola cases on Wednesday after the infection of a second Texas healthcare worker prompted him to postpone a political trip in a sign of growing concern.

Obama spoke after convening a special Cabinet meeting at the White House to discuss the U.S. response to the deadly virus. He acknowledged concerns and fears raised by the handling of the original Ebola patient at a Dallas hospital, Liberian national Thomas Duncan, who died of Ebola and infected at least two healthcare workers while there.

The case of the second healthcare worker who contracted the disease, Dallas nurse Amber Vinson, has triggered alarm because she flew on a commercial airliner a day before reporting symptoms.

The Vinson case forced Obama, who typically hews closely to his schedule, to abruptly put off a trip to New Jersey and Connecticut, amid growing criticism of the administration's handling of Ebola, which is raging out of control in West Africa.

The postponement suggested a sensitivity by Obama to the unfolding crisis after he drew harsh criticism in August for playing golf moments after delivering his response to the beheading of an American by Islamic State militants in Syria.

Obama said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has been criticized for its handling of the Ebola situation, would send a rapid-response SWAT team within 24 hours to any hospital or healthcare facility where an Ebola case is reported to ensure proper protections are being carried out.

He also said it is critical to safeguard doctors and nurses. "We have to make sure that we are doing everything we can to take care of them even as they take care of us," he said.

At the same time, Obama urged Americans to remain calm and stressed that the risk posed by Ebola in the United States was extremely low.

"It's not like the flu, it's not airborne," he said. Rather, he said, the only way to get it is by coming into contact with the body fluids of someone who is showing Ebola symptoms.

The White House has strongly backed CDC director Tom Frieden, with spokesman Josh Earnest saying the government is showing "the kind of tenacious, adaptive response that's required."

But criticism grew of the administration's handling of the situation.

U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican, said Obama should "absolutely consider" a temporary ban on travel to the United States from countries at the center of the Ebola outbreak - something the White House has so far ruled out.

Democratic Representative Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas told MSNBC that the CDC needs to be more responsive.

With three weeks to go until congressional elections Nov. 4, Obama had planned to attend a Democratic fundraiser in Union, New Jersey, and headline a rally for the re-election of Democratic Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

The worker at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas had taken a Frontier Airlines flight from Cleveland, Ohio, to Dallas-Fort Worth on Monday, officials said.

Obama also held a video conference call on Wednesday with leaders from Britain, France, Germany and Italy, to discuss Ebola and stress that a larger international response to the crisis is needed.

If not stopped at the source, "it will spread globally in an age of frequent travel," he said.