On January 28, 2020, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services/Assistant Secretary for Prevention and Response (HHS/ASPR) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) requested Nebraska serve as one of five sites in the continental U.S. to house Americans being repatriated from Wuhan, China—the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak.
These individuals had been screened for COVID-19 in China and were asymptomatic but were required by the CDC to quarantine for 14 days upon their return to the U.S. to monitor for symptoms of the virus. HHS/ASPR and CDC asked Nebraska to serve as the only non-Department of Defense site due to UNMC/Nebraska Medicine’s previous treatment of patients with highly hazardous communicable diseases in the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit (NBU) and its experience training and providing education to health care and public health professionals through such programs as the National Ebola Training and Education Center (NETEC) and the federal Training, Simulation, and Quarantine Center (TSQC) at the Davis Global Center which includes the nation’s only federal quarantine unit, the National Quarantine Unit (NQU).
The GCHS worked with Nebraska state and local officials to secure the Camp Ashland Nebraska National Guard Training Center to serve as the quarantine site. The GCHS also coordinated food service, housekeeping, information technology support, lodging, facility maintenance, transportation, emergency medical support, and terminal cleaning of all affected locations. The Davis Global Center became the headquarters for federal personnel leading the quarantine effort in Nebraska, which included more than 70 officers from ASPR, CDC, the National Disaster Medical System, and the U.S. Marshals Service.
On February 7, 2020, 57 Americans arrived at Omaha’s Eppley Airfield where they were screened by CDC quarantine officers and transported to Camp Ashland. By all accounts, their stay at Camp Ashland was well received and uneventful. One person developed minor respiratory symptoms and was transported to the National Quarantine Unit. After two negative coronavirus tests, this person returned to Camp Ashland for the remainder of their quarantine period. On February 20, the quarantine period came to an end, and the 57 Americans departed Omaha.