New 21-day Ebola monitoring period for visitors from West Africa

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• GWEN IFILL:

  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now says everyone who returns to the U.S. from West Africa will be monitored for 21 days, the incubation period for the virus. That announcement coincided with the first day on the job for the new White House Ebola coordinator.

  Ron Klain was named Ebola response coordinator Friday, and appeared for his first official day at work at a White House meeting with the president today.

• PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA:

  What we're seeing is that the public health infrastructure and systems that we are now putting in place across the board around the country should give the American people confidence that we're going to be in a position to deal with any additional cases of Ebola that might crop up, without it turning into an outbreak.

• GWEN IFILL:

  Among the changes in the U.S. response to the crisis, security workers at five major U.S. airports are now screening passengers from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. And new monitoring announced today begins Monday in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and Georgia. They are the destinations of 70 percent of travelers from West Africa's Ebola zone.

  Meanwhile, an American freelance cameraman who contracted Ebola in Liberia was discharged today from a hospital in Omaha, Nebraska.

  Doctors say Ashoka Mukpo is cured.

  DR. PHIL SMITH, University of Nebraska Medical Center: There's no greater reward than to take a patient with a critically ill serious medical illness and make them better, and we have done that.

• GWEN IFILL:

  But a new scare arose Tuesday in Newark, New Jersey, as ambulances raced to the airport to pick up a Liberian man reported to be showing symptoms of Ebola, but that was a false alarm.

  Governor Chris Christie says they followed protocol.

  GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE, (R) New Jersey: He is now asymptomatic. There is no indication at this point that he has been infected with the virus.

• GWEN IFILL:

  Dozens of Ebola survivors in Sierra Leone were also released from a treatment center virus-free. They received certificates showing they're now healthy.

  All told, the World Health Organization reported today Ebola has killed more than 4,800 people in West Africa out of nearly 10,000 cases.

  Still, the head of the International Red Cross argued today against closing borders or banning travel.

  ELHADJ AS SY, Secretary-General, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies: It creates a lot of fear and extreme panic that sometimes leads to very irrational type of behaviors and measures, like closing borders, canceling flights, isolating countries, et cetera. And those are not solutions.

• GWEN IFILL:

  The official said he believes the epidemic can be contained within four to six months.

  And the race to find a vaccine continued. Two companies, GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson & Johnson, said today they're discussing a possible collaboration.

  The government's latest steps illustrate again just how much anxiety remains about the prospect of Ebola's spread. But as public health officials continue to emphasize, the real risk to most Americans remains small.