CDC workers’ kids sent home from school

His ex-wife, who does not live with him, called last week to say she had been sent home from her teaching job at Newton High School. His two sons, who do live with him, were escorted out of their schools as well. All were asked not to return until they had a doctor’s note clearing them of Ebola infection, Amman said.

The same has happened to the families of at least two other employees of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has about 160 people fighting the Ebola virus in West Africa at any one time. As a result, the CDC and the state Department of Public Health sent a letter this week to Georgia educators, asking that they “not impose unnecessary restrictions on persons who do not present a health risk.”

The letter describes typical Ebola symptoms and says, “A person who is not showing any signs or symptoms cannot infect others, not even close contacts such as children, spouses, other household members or classmates.”

The CDC is in a delicate position: the agency is bending over backward to acknowledge people’s legitimate concern about Ebola while also urging them to learn how the disease works and, in effect, stop penalizing the families of people who volunteer to fight the epidemic. It’s also a tough call for school systems, which must consider the safety and worries of students, staff members and parents.

“We at CDC totally understand people’s fears about Ebola,” said CDC spokesman Tom Skinner. “Unfortunately, there’s a lot of misinformation out there. I think the misinformation leads to additional fears, and it sometimes leads our policymakers to make policy that, while their intentions are to protect public health, the policy itself can sort of add to that fear. We want to tell this story about our employees and some of the challenges they’re facing as they come back as a way to educate people about Ebola.”

Joe Merlino, a CDC employee who worked in Sierra Leone as a logistics support operations officer, arrived back home Oct. 27. A few days later, his wife was asked to leave her teaching job in Henry County, and his daughter, a senior at the University of West Georgia, was asked to leave her student teaching assignment at Carrollton City Schools, he said. His daughter could not return until Nov. 17, which would be 21 days since Merlino left Sierra Leone — the incubation period for Ebola.

Merlino, 52, said his wife was allowed to return to work in a few days, once she had obtained a doctor’s clearance.

‘The decision here was quite simple’

A spokesman for the Carrollton school system said the decision to keep Merlino’s daughter out of class for now was the best choice for all concerned.

“She had put on social media that she was finally able to hug her father, who had been working in that region,” said the spokesman, Jay Goodman. That set off a “what does this mean? conversation” within the school system, he said. A district official called West Georgia to ask whether the student would suffer academically if her student teaching assignment were suspended and was told no.

“Having heard that, the decision here was quite simple,” Goodman said. “Do we really want to set off panic inside a school building when we have other options that keep everything as calm as can be? So we asked her to wait until that time had passed, and she could come back, with no academic downside at all. That seemed to be the best course for everyone.”

In Sierra Leone, Merlino said, he worked in an office in Freetown, coordinating the work of CDC field teams. He never even came close to an Ebola patient.

“Categorically, there is minimal to no risk of exposure for me,” he said.

Both Merlino and Amman are self-monitoring, taking their temperatures twice a day and reporting in to both the CDC and state public health authorities. Neither has any symptoms.

In the case of Amman’s children and ex-wife, a Newton County schools spokeswoman said last week the district had no information on Amman other than that he had been in Sierra Leone. The school district did not know why he was there, for whom he was working or whether he was in contact with Ebola patients.

“We reacted to the information we received and took the appropriate precautions,” the spokeswoman, Sherri Davis-Viniard, said in an email. “If we are going to err, it will be on the side of protecting students. Their safety and well-being is our top priority, and parents expect us to take every precaution to protect their children.”

‘You think you’re doing the right thing’

As a CDC ecologist, Amman normally works on animals, seeking to identify the “natural reservoir” (or carrier) of a given virus. He talks of once crawling through a cave in Uganda to find the bat that was the reservoir of Marburg virus, which is similar to Ebola. But on his rotation in Sierra Leone, he took on a different role.

“It’s such a massive effort that they needed people to go, and I volunteered,” he said. “We’ve had experience working in this realm on the ecology side of it, and I thought I could be helpful working on the human side as well.”

Amman said he was taken aback by some of the reactions he saw on the Web after word about his ex-wife got out in Covington last week.

“You think you’re over there doing the right thing, and you come home and there’s a lot of anger and anxiety targeted directly at you,” he said. “It’s sort of disheartening.”

He continued, “We don’t want to bring anything home to our families, much less drag something back to the United States. Safety is our primary concern when we’re over there. … Did they think I’m that callous that I would come home and be sick and not tell anybody?”

Both Amman and Merlino said they want to return to the Ebola battleground.

“I’m going back to West Africa,” Merlino said. “I’m not going to let this stop me. They’re going to need more volunteers, and I’ve already signed up for January. … Most of the people I served with in Sierra Leone want to go back. You can’t imagine the energy and spirit of the people working over there.”