In late September, Thomas Duncan became the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S. Two hospital workers who treated him also became infected, setting off a nationwide effort to contain the disease, and fears of a larger outbreak. Keep checking this page for all the latest updates on the crisis.

All times Eastern

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October 22, 12:10 p.m.

CDC announces 21-day monitoring for travelers from west Africa

Health officials will monitor travelers from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, for 21 days after they arrive in the U.S., the CDC announced Wednesday in the latest expansion of the federal response to the Ebola outbreak in west Africa.

CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden told reporters on a conference call that the monitoring program will be carried out beginning Monday by state and local officials in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey, and Georgia. Travelers will be given kits to check themselves for fever and other Ebola symptoms during the three-week period that the virus can remain present in the body before a person becomes sick. They will be required to inform health officials of their condition on a daily basis, the Associated Press reported.

–Russell Berman

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October 21, 12:20 p.m.

U.S. tightens travel from Ebola epicenter

It's not a outright Ebola travel ban, but the federal government is limiting the ways in which passengers from west Africa can enter the United States.

The Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday announced that travelers from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea–the three countries at the center of the Ebola outbreak–will have to fly into the U.S. through one of five airports: New York's JFK, Washington D.C.'s Dulles, Atlanta, Chicago O'Hare, and Newark, N.J. Those are the same five airports where officials began secondary screenings of travelers from those countries earlier this month. Read more...

–Russell Berman

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October 21, 10:15 a.m.

Democrats defy Obama on travel ban

Worried about the political fallout from the Ebola outbreak, vulnerable Senate Democrats are declaring their support for a U.S. travel ban from the afflicted countries in west Africa.

In multiple cases, the Democrats are shifting off their earlier positions on the question, despite arguments from senior U.S. medical officials and the White House that stiff restrictions would only make it harder to prevent an infected person from entering the country. Read more...

–Russell Berman

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October 20, 10:12 a.m.

New standards for protective gear

The CDC will soon release stricter standards for personal protective gear for American hospital workers handling suspected Ebola patients.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said this weekend that the new rules will require full-body suits that leave no skin exposed, as well as a "site manager" to oversee workers as they don and remove gear.

The earlier rules allowed for some degree of variation between hospitals and were designed for field work in Africa. "So there were parts about that protocol that left vulnerability, parts of the skin that were open," Fauci told the AP.

Healthcare workers will also have to practice getting in and out of the protective gear.

—Olga Khazan   

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October 20, 9:14 a.m.

Texas contacts reach the end of their quarantine

Sunday marked the end of the 21-day observation period for most of those who came into contact with Thomas Duncan, the first Ebola patient to be diagnosed in the United States. If patients go three weeks without showing symptoms, they can generally be declared free of the virus. Meanwhile, Senegal and Nigeria have both been declared Ebola-free by WHO, as their outbreaks have been contained. Read more...

—Dashiell Bennett

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October 17, 2:00 p.m.

White House describes Ron Klain as 'implementation expert'

Understandably, the White House is not calling Ron Klain a "czar." Officially, Klain will be known as the "Ebola response coordinator," press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters on Friday.

"As far as I'm concerned, you can call him anything you want. We call him the Ebola response coordinator," Earnest said.

President Obama appointed Klain, a former chief of staff to two vice presidents, to oversee the government's response to the outbreak in west Africa and the virus's spread in the United States. Republicans have already criticized the pick, noting that Klain has no medical or public health expertise. Earnest quipped that it was a "shocking development" that GOP lawmakers would oppose a presidential decision three weeks before an election.

More seriously, Earnest said Obama was not looking for an "Ebola expert" but an "implementation expert" who could guide a whole-of-government response to the crisis. He cited Klain's experience, while working for Vice President Biden, in coordinating the implementation of the 2009 economic stimulus package.

"We think he is exceedingly well-suited to the task," Earnest said. "His area of expertise is in implementation, and that is exactly what is needed."

Klain is not on the job yet, but he will start soon.

On the question of a travel ban, Earnest continued to argue against the policy change, saying it could produce a "perverse" effect by incentivizing travelers from west Africa to seek other ways into the country. Governor Rick Perry of Texas joined other Republicans in calling for tighter restrictions on Friday.

—Russell Berman

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October 17, 1:36 p.m.

Nurses say their hospitals did not prepare them for Ebola

Now that two nurses have contracted Ebola, nurses' groups around the country blame their hospitals and the CDC for not providing adequate protective gear or training staff in how to use it.

Lynda Pond, a labor and delivery nurse in Springfield, Oregon, told The Atlantic:

None of [the rooms] have antechambers for donning and removing isolation gear. A "cart" with paper gowns, gloves, and non-specific masks is parked outside the door. The nurse [puts on] gowns and gloves outside the room, enters the room, provides care and removes the equipment at the door prior to exiting, placing it in a garbage bin inside the room ... To my knowledge there is not adequate supply of full hazmat suits, there are not instructions for gloving, taping and gloving again. Nor are there leggings or shoe covers as part of the standard isolation gear.

"As it is," she added, "staffing is so short, our patient population so sick, that the nurses are doing all they can to take care of what they have. Ebola is a sideline conversation." Read more ...

—Olga Khazan

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October 17, 10:38 a.m.

Obama appoints new "Ebola czar"

President Obama will appoint former White House official Ron Klain to be the new "Ebola czar," according to report from CNN. Klain, who is not a doctor and has no healthcare background, is probably best known as Al Gore's former chief of staff and a member of his inner circle during the 2000 presidential campaign and Florida recount. (He was played by Kevin Spacey in the HBO movie Recount.)

—Dashiell Bennett

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October 17, 9:05 a.m.

Texas health worker under watch for Ebola is on cruise ship

The State Department is seeking the return to the U.S. of a Texas health worker who boarded a cruise ship after handling clinical specimens from Thomas Eric Duncan, the Ebola patient who died in the U.S. last week.

Jennifer Psaki, a State Department spokeswoman, said in a statement early Friday that the unnamed employee of the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital left on a cruise ship from Galveston on October 12, before the CDC stepped up its monitoring requirements after two nurses who treated Duncan were diagnoses with Ebola.

"The employee did not have direct contact with the since deceased Ebola patient, but may have had contact with clinical specimens collected from him," Psaki said.

The health worker has been placed in isolation on the ship, and a doctor aboard the vessel said she was "in good health," according to the State Department. "We are working with the cruise line to safely bring them back to the United States out of an abundance of caution," Psaki said.

Yet that may be more difficult, because the government of Belize said in a statement posted on Facebook that it had denied a U.S. request to evacuate the worker through Philip Goldson International Airport in Belize City "out of an abundance of caution." The statement made clear to the public that "the passenger never set foot in Belize."

—Russell Berman

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October 17, 8:45 a.m.

Obama opens door to travel ban, Ebola 'czar'

Is President Obama changing his mind on a possible travel ban from the three west African countries caught up in the Ebola epidemic?

The president told reporters after a meeting on the outbreak Thursday evening that he did not have any "philosophical objections necessarily" to travel restrictions but that his experts had told him it would be less effective than the screening measures currently in place. It marked a shift, at least in tone, from previous statements, when the White House and senior health officials said a ban was not under consideration. Calls for a ban have grown in recent days, particularly from Republicans.

Obama also signaled he might appoint an Ebola "czar" to oversee the government's response to the crisis. He noted that the CDC director, Dr. Thomas Frieden, and his senior counterterrorism adviser, Lisa Monaco, had other responsibilities even as they have taken the lead in handling Ebola.

"So it may make sense for us to have one person, in part just so that after this initial surge of activity we can have a more regular process just to make sure that we’re crossing all the T’s and dotting all the I’s going forward," the president said.

—Russell Berman

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October 16, 5:13 p.m.

CDC director argues against an Ebola travel ban

Dr. Thomas Frieden said authorities preferred a system where they could screen people trying to come to the U.S. by air rather than instituting a ban that would force would-be travelers to go around checkpoints and slip into the country undetected.

"Right now, we know who's coming," Frieden said. If restrictions were in place, he added later, "there’s a high likelihood they will find another way to get there, and we won’t be able track them as we are now." Read more...

—Russell Berman

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October 16, 4:00 p.m.

Ebola patients move to other hospitals

Nina Pham, one of the two Dallas hospital workers infected with Ebola is being transferred to the National Institutes of Health hospital in Maryland to continue her treatment. The other, Amber Vinson, was sent to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta on Wednesday. Read more...

—CNN.com

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October 16, 10:08 a.m.

Republicans turn their anger on the CDC

Lawmakers on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are briefly leaving the campaign trail to hold a hearing on the public health crisis that has quickly become a top issue in the midterm elections. Read more...

—Russell Berman

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October 15, 2:44 p.m.

CDC steps up Ebola precautions

The CDC is contacting all 132 passengers who were onboard the Frontier Airlines flight from Cleveland to Dallas on Monday along with a nurse who treated Thomas Eric Duncan, the first U.S. Ebola patient. CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden bluntly told reporters on Wednesday that the nurse "should not have traveled" on the plane because she was one of dozens who were being monitored for exposure to the deadly disease.

In an indication of the seriousness of the Ebola situation, President Obama cancelled a campaign trip planned for Wednesday afternoon to convene his Cabinet at the White House. The president told reporters after the two-hour meeting that the government would be monitoring the response in Dallas "in a much more aggressive way" and that he had instructed the CDC to dispatch "a SWAT team" of rapid responders to any hospital reporting a diagnosis of Ebola. Read more...

—Russell Berman