World Heath Organization (WHO) and other health officials debunked the news that the Ebola virus can be acquired through air.
Abc.net posted WHO's explanation about the virus alongside an extensive list of ways one can acquire the disease.
"Airborne spread among humans implies inhalation of an infectious dose of virus from a suspended cloud of small dried droplets," it says. "This mode of transmission has not been observed during extensive studies of the Ebola virus over several decades."
Furthermore, Dr. Edward Goodman of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas guaranteed that the virus is in no way airborne.
"Ebola is not transmitted by the air. It is not an airborne infection," he said.
The very same hospital Goodman is affiliated with took care of Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who flew through airports in Brussels and Washington and was later diagnosed with the disease. He succumbed to the disease earlier this week.
Health officials also emphasized that despite 10 people being in close contact with the patient, all of them remained safe from Ebola. Officials also assured that 'unless an air traveler from disease-ravaged West Africa has a fever of at least 101.5 degrees or other symptoms, co-passengers are not at risk.'
"At this point there is zero risk of transmission on the flight," Dr. Thomas Frieden, Director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed.
Health officials have been informing the public that the only way one can acquire the virus is through direct contact with bodily fluids of the infected person such as sweat, blood, feces vomit, urine, saliva, or semen. Tom Skinner from US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) seconds this and said that CDC has not found a reason to worry about the virus mutating after conducting various lab analyses.
Yet others exposed to fighting Ebola face to face are very skeptical.
Dr. C.J. Peters, who fought a 1989 outbreak affecting research monkeys in Virginia and continues to gather more helpful details about the virus said that 'unqualified assurances that Ebola is not spread through the air are misleading' and that the possibility of Ebola evolving into an airborne virus should be taken into account.
Virologist, Dr. Philip K. Russell who led the Ebola research in the U.S. Army's Medical Research and Development Command, is on Peters's side. The fact that many things about the disease are still unknown is something to consider.
"I see the reasons to dampen down public fears," Russell said. "But scientifically, we're in the middle of the first experiment of multiple, serial passages of Ebola virus in man. God knows what this virus is going to look like. I don't."
Meanwhile, to prevent the virus from crossing the U.S. borders, Frieden and CDC follow strict protocols that they claim to be reliable and effective.
"One hundred percent of the individuals getting on planes are screened for fever before they get on the plane," Frieden said, according to LA Times. "And if they have a fever, they are pulled out of the line, assessed for Ebola, and don't fly unless Ebola is ruled out."
