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US officials defend Ebola response; nurse moved

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In the face of skepticism in Congress, health officials tried to assure the nation Thursday that they can head off an Ebola outbreak in the U.S. despite mistakes that let the deadly virus spread to two nurses and cleared one of them to fly.The revelation that one of the hospital nurses was allowed on a commercial airline the day before she was diagnosed raised new alarms about the U.S. response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Some lawmakers pressed for a ban on travel to the U.S. from the region - a course President Barack Obama is resisting.The death toll is expected to climb above 4,500 in Africa, all but a few within Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, the World Health Organization said.Obama directed his administration to respond in a \much more aggressive way\ to the threat and, for a second day in a row, canceled his out-of-town trips to stay in town and monitor the Ebola response. He was calling foreign leaders and U.S. lawmakers to discuss what more must be done, the White House said, and bringing his Cabinet members together on the matter.But a ban on travel to the U.S. from the Ebola-stricken countries is not under consideration, spokesman Josh Earnest reiterated Thursday.Obama believes the U.S. already is taking the necessary steps to protect the public by screening passengers as they depart West Africa and again when they enter the U.S., Earnest said.In Sierra Leone, the government announced the virus had infected two people in the last part of the country that had been free of the disease, in the mountainous north, despite aggressive steps to keep it at bay.The first nurse stricken in the U.S., Nina Pham, who contracted Ebola after treating a Liberian man at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, was being flown to the National Institutes of Health outside Washington on Thursday, while a second nurse has already been transferred to a biohazard infectious disease center at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.The two nurses, Pham and Amber Joy Vinson, had been involved in providing care to Thomas Duncan, who died of Ebola last week.In a hearing on Capitol Hill, the chairman of a House committee cited \demonstrated failures\ in the government's response. Rep. Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania said the \trust and credibility of the administration and government are waning as the American public loses confidence each day.\ Seated before him were leaders of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the NIH.Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the CDC, testified that despite the latest incidents, \we remain confident that our public health and health care systems can prevent an Ebola outbreak here.\In his prepared testimony, the Texas hospital's chief clinical officer, Dr. Daniel Varga, admitted the facility had made mistakes in Duncan's initial treatment, he apologized for that.\We did not correctly diagnose his symptoms as those of Ebola