Air Force personnel in Liberia in October.
All but 100 of the 3,000 armed forces members deployed to fight Ebola in
West Africa will return home by the end of April, officials said.
WASHINGTON — President Obama
will announce Wednesday that he is withdrawing almost all the American
troops who were sent to West Africa to help contain the spread of the Ebola virus, administration officials said Tuesday.
He
will also outline new steps aimed at eradicating the disease now that
the crisis has eased, said the officials, who were not authorized to
speak publicly until the moves are announced.
All but 100 of the 3,000 American military service members deployed to fight the deadly disease
will return home by the end of April, the officials said. The president
will make the announcement at a White House ceremony where he will meet
with six of the eight American Ebola
survivors — including the two Dallas nurses and the New York doctor —
as well as soldiers, civilians, health care workers and philanthropists
who have contributed to the Ebola efforts since the epidemic began last
year, the officials said.
But
the ceremony also raises questions about whether Mr. Obama is
prematurely claiming success on what he had labeled a national security
priority, opening himself to criticism should Ebola again spiral out of
control.
“We
are at a bit of a pivot point in this, where we have bent the curve of
the epidemic, stopped the exponential growth and have the number of
cases down,” Ron Klain, Mr. Obama’s Ebola response coordinator, said in
an interview on Tuesday. “That is a tremendous achievement to be proud
of.”
At
the same time, “this epidemic is far from over,” said Mr. Klain, who
will step down on Friday. “There’s a lot of work left to be done. We
have to get all the way to zero, and we’re not going to stop until
that’s achieved.”
Evidence is mounting that the spread of Ebola has slowed considerably in West Africa, particularly in Liberia.
Four months ago, well over 1,000 cases were reported every week in West
Africa, and some public health officials estimated that the death total
could reach one million by the end of January. Instead, there were
about 9,000 deaths, and Liberia is now reporting only a handful each week — a dozen in the past three weeks.
Mr.
Obama approved plans to withdraw the troops at a National Security
Council meeting in late January, the officials said. He told advisers at
the time that he wanted to speak publicly about it, both to thank the
military personnel and to make it clear that the Ebola effort would
continue.
But
the signs of progress come with substantial caveats. Mr. Obama’s
advisers say Ebola will remain a concern until the virus is stamped out,
and public health officials are not close to achieving that goal. There
has been a slight increase in cases in Guinea over the past several weeks, and in Sierra Leone the steep decline in cases has leveled off, indicating challenges in containing the disease there.
The
administration plans to shift its focus from procedures like isolating
patients and carrying out safe burial practices. Instead, it will step
up efforts to track patients and their contacts on a case-by-case basis,
officials said.
The
100 troops who will remain in Liberia will maintain the American-built
health care centers as a safeguard should a sudden resurgence of the
virus require United States forces to return quickly — a development
that an official said the administration believed was “extremely
unlikely.” The military will also leave behind some equipment, such as
testing laboratories, that were monitored by military personnel, with
the remaining troops training Liberians to operate them.
In
addition, the United States is financing the current response effort in
West Africa, which includes 2,000 “disease detectives” who are in
charge of tracing new Ebola patients’ contacts, with the goal of
eradicating the disease.
It
is not clear how the administration will ensure that the 15 Ebola
treatment centers in Liberia, the last of which was completed just last
month, will remain available to patients in the event of a flare-up.
Some of the facilities will be maintained at least through the end of
the rainy season in October, an official said, while others will be
transformed into preventive-care centers.
Mr.
Obama, who won bipartisan support late last year for his $6 billion
emergency financing request in the fight against Ebola, does not plan to
request any new money for the effort, officials said. About $2.5
billion is financing Ebola response efforts overseas. Roughly $3 billion
is dedicated to United States efforts to better confront Ebola and
other infectious disease outbreaks.
American
officials expect to use the Ebola airport-screening and
patient-tracking protocols in other disease crises. Passengers arriving
from affected countries fill out forms that are sent to the United
States Customs and Border Protection
Agency and to state and local health officials. The patients are
screened and issued identification numbers and prepaid cellphones that
health workers use to track them daily for three weeks, Ebola’s
incubation period.
About 1,150 people are being tracked, and Mr. Klain receives daily updates.
The
administration has yet to exhaust the $750 million in Pentagon
financing that was transferred for use in humanitarian efforts in
October to pay for the Ebola deployment, an administration official
said. Initial plans called for 4,000 troops in West Africa, but American
military officials said in November that the number could be reduced as
infections slowed.
The first of the troops returned to the United States in December, and a total of 1,500 have come home, the officials said.
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