Ron Klain, the Ebola czar picked by President Barack Obama last month, said Tuesday that the release of the last American Ebola patient from a U.S. hospital is a “milestone” but that Americans should be prepared for "occasional additional" cases of the virus within the nation’s borders.
"It’s a milestone in showing that our strategy of identifying, isolating and treating Ebola can be successful," he said on Andrea Mitchell Reports on MSNBC.
Klain said that health care workers like Dr. Craig Spencer, who was released from a New York hospital earlier Tuesday, should be welcomed back to the country as "heroes" and that others like him should not be dissuaded from treating the disease by "quarantines that aren’t based on medical science."
He noted that he will be pushing members of Congress to allocate over $6 billion to prepare for and fight Ebola, adding that he briefed bipartisan congressional members on the request at a White House meeting earlier this week.
Obama named Klain, a former political aide who left the White House in 2011, for the job on October 17 amid public pressure to address anxiety about Ebola cases in the United States.
Once the Ebola issue is put to rest, he said, he’s heading back to the private sector.
"I’m here to fight this fight, do this crisis," he said. "Once I’m finished, I’m going back to private life. This is more than enough for me."