The White House opposes travel ban despite Ebola cases

A Caribbean cruise ship carrying a Dallas health care worker who handled a lab specimen from the Liberian man who died of Ebola is heading back to Texas. The ship was refused permission to dock in Cozumel, Mexico.

The health care worker is being monitored for signs of the disease. But officials say she poses no risk, because she has shown no signs of illness for 19 days. She’s voluntarily self-quarantined on the cruise ship, the Carnival Magic.

Yesterday, officials in Belize refused to let the passenger leave the ship. And the government of Belize said it had refused a U.S. government request to fly the woman home through the Belize City airport.

Carnival says the ship left Cozumel waters at midday with the goal of returning to its home port of Galveston Sunday morning as originally scheduled.

Passengers will get a $200 credit in their ship accounts, and a 50 percent discount for future cruises, because they weren’t able to go ashore in Cozumel.

Meanwhile, the Virginia public health authorities say the woman who became ill in the Pentagon parking lot, setting off an Ebola scare, does not have the virus.

Officials at Arlington and Fairfax counties’ public health departments say they are confident she does not have Ebola, based on her travel history and questioning by medical officials. They say she was put in isolation at Inova Fairfax Hospital, and that medical personnel took all needed precautions.

Pentagon police shut down a building entrance and a portion of the south parking lot Friday when the woman boarded a shuttle bus, then got off and vomited. Officials say she told them she had recently been in West Africa. Officials temporarily sequestered people on the bus and personnel who went to her aid.

The White House is reaffirming its opposition to a travel ban that would stop people from coming to the United States from West Africa. Among those now calling for such a ban is Texas Gov. Rick Perry. He also says he has asked President

Barack Obama to have Ebola cases sent quickly to facilities that are better able to deal with the disease. A man from West Africa died of Ebola at a Dallas hospital, and two nurses involved in his care became infected.

President Barack Obama is naming Ron Klain, a former chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden and a trusted adviser at the Obama White House, as the point man on the U.S. government’s response to the Ebola crisis.

Obama has been under pressure to name an Ebola “czar” to oversee health security in the U.S. and actions to help stem the outbreak in West Africa.

Klain has been out of government since leaving Biden’s office during the Obama’s first term. The White House said that Klain would report to national security adviser Susan Rice and to homeland security and counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco.

Klain, a lawyer, also served as chief of staff for Vice President Al Gore. He previously served under Attorney General Janet Reno in the Clinton administration.

In other Ebola related developments, the World Health Organization is criticizing its own staff, as it admits to mistakes in the handling of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. In a draft internal document, the U.N. health agency says the response was marred by incompetency and by an ineffective bureaucracy.

For full coverage on the Ebola virus, click here.