As news of a second confirmed case of Ebola in the United States made headlines on Sunday, Republican lawmakers intensified calls for the White House to appoint a single point person as an Ebola "czar" to stop the deadly virus from spreading any further, ABC News reported.
Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, is the latest Republican demanding President Obama grant a person from his administration the authority to shepherd federal resources to fight Ebola.
"I would say that we don't know exactly who's in charge. There has to be some kind of czar," McCain told CNN's Candy Crowley Sunday.
"My constituents are not comforted," he added on "State of the Union." "There has to be more reassurance given to them."
The Obama administration, however, has maintained that its top advisor, who is heading the current Ebola strategy, would prove much more efficient in preventing the virus. The adminisration's response also needs to be "as nimble and as bureaucratically lean as possible in order to bring the overseas epidemic under control and respond efficiently and effectively here at home," according to a National Security Council spokesman.
For now, Obama's top homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, Lisa Monaco, is responsible for coordinating the administration's response to the Ebola crisis, a senior administration official stated Monday.
"Lisa does have a lot on her plate, but she's a very talented individual," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said last week. "We will make any adjustments we feel to be necessary."
While USAID is responsible for managing the Ebola outbreak overseas, Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are in charge in the United States, with Monaco helping in the coordination of the interagency response, ABC News reported.
Additionally, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson, said all Ebola patients in the U.S. should be transferred to specialized biocontainment facilities instead of being treated at hospitals, according to CNN.
"The CDC attributes the new infection (in Texas) to a breach in protocol, which raises the question whether ordinary hospitals that may not have had specialized training on caring for seriously ill patients safely should be responsible for the long-term care of an Ebola patient when there are beds available in one of our nation's biocontainment units," Thompson of Mississippi said.
"That's a decision we're leaving to the medical professionals," the administration official said of Thompson's proposal. "We plan to follow their recommendations. To date, they have not made such a recommendation."
