Former White House adviser Ron Klain will meet with President Barack Obama and top aides in the Oval Office on Wednesday, his first day as the new “Ebola czar." Klain, who is Vice President Joe Biden's former chief of staff and a veteran political operative, also has meetings scheduled with various White House teams leading the government's response to Ebola at home and in West Africa.
Obama named Klain to the post last Friday. He's already been spotted at the White House chatting with senior Obama advisers he'll be working with in his new role coordinating the array of federal agencies dealing with the Ebola crisis.
It came as the federal government moved to clsoe a gap in Ebola screening at airports and states from New York to Texas to California work to get hospitals and nurses ready in case another patient turns up somewhere in the U.S. with the deadly disease. Under the rule going into effect Wednesday, air travelers from the West African nations of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea must enter the United States through one of five airports doing special screenings and fever checks for Ebola. A handful of people had been arriving at other airports and missing the checks.
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