Possible cases of Ebola in the United States are being kept confidential, with the government asking health officials to keep information from reaching the public, investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson revealed on Sunday.
There is a strong effort to control the message since the hysterical outbreak made national headlines a few months ago, Attkisson said on Fox News Channel's "Media Buzz."
"A lot of the media coverage has gone from overtime to almost nothing since they appointed the 'Ebola czar,'" Attkisson told host Howard Kurtz.
To further investigate the matter, she contacted the CDC recently and asked how many potential cases are actively being monitored in the United States. They stated the number to be a staggering 1,400 cases.
"I said, 'Where is that on your on your website, these updates?' They said, 'We're not putting it on the web. So, I think there is an effort to control the message and to tamp it down," she said. "This is public information we have a right to know and the media should not hype it, but cover it."
After the first case of Ebola was diagnosed in the United States in September, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden was all over the airwaves. Later, two nurses' contracted the virus themselves due to an unknown "breach of protocol" in treating 42-year-old Thomas Eric Duncan.
After President Barack Obama appointed political operative Ron Klain as Ebola czar in October, news coverage about the disease and its cases seem to have disappeared from the public eye.
That, Attkisson believes, was by design, according to Newsmax.
The confidentiality, however, could hurt the deadly disease's future treatment, with infectious disease experts remaining "very concerned" because if Ebola gets out of control in the United States "we will not even be able to, obviously, deal with it."
Meanwhile, the public can be viewed to be safer today because media coverage and a public outcry forced the government to take action and handle the Ebola crisis immediately in a proper manner, Attkisson said.
