THE EBOLA EPIDEMIC | Latest developments

New developments in the world response to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa:

Obama pushes back against calls for travel ban

President Barack Obama says the United States can’t just cut itself off from West Africa even though Ebola is raging there.

In his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday, Obama pushed back against calls for the U.S. to institute a travel ban. He said trying to seal off a region of the world isn’t possible and if it were, it would only make things worse.

Canada to ship experimental vaccine to World health organization

The Canadian government said it will start shipping its experimental Ebola vaccine to the World Health Organization on Monday for possible use in the West African countries hardest hit by the outbreak.

The government said in a news release Saturday that the Public Health Agency of Canada is supplying the vaccine to the U.N. agency in Geneva.

Ebola victim remembered

Thomas Eric Duncan was remembered Saturday as a big-hearted and compassionate man whose virtues may have led to his infection with Ebola in his native Liberia and subsequent death as the first victim of the disease in the United States.

Family and friends gathered in Salisbury, N.C., at a small Southern Baptist church with a primarily Liberian flock near where Duncan’s mother and other family members live.

Food deliveries in Sierra Leone

The U.N.’s World Food Program on Saturday delivered emergency food rations to 265,000 people, many of them quarantined in Sierra Leone, to help fight the spread of Ebola.

Food supplies are being distributed in the Waterloo district on the outskirts of Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, WFP’s Alexis Masciarelli told the Associated Press.

Waterloo, about 20 miles east of Freetown, has seen some of the highest cases of Ebola infections and the deliveries are to help quarantined families by providing them enough to eat so they do not leave their homes to look for food. The deliveries began Friday and continued Saturday, said Masciarelli.

Cost of fear on the economy

In a Harris Poll/Health Day survey of Americans, nearly one-fourth of the respondents said they might change their holiday or business travel plans because of Ebola fears.

There have been only three cases of Ebola diagnosed in the country, but economists are concerned that the actual costs of treating the victims and containing the disease will be far outstripped by the cost of fear that slows the economy.

“For me, as an economist, the biggest risk to the nation is not the disease itself, but the reduced spending a panic might result in,” said Frank Lenk, chief economist at the Mid-America Regional Council.

Source: Combined dispatches