Fort Campbell Soldiers Deployed To Liberia Could Start Returning In January

Gen. David Rodriguez heads U.S. Africa Command. He briefed reporters at the Pentagon Wednesday on the military’s mission in Liberia. Credit: DoD

The Army’s mission in Liberia in response to the Ebola virus has been scaled back, according to Pentagon officials.

At a briefing Wednesday, Gen. David Rodriguez – who leads the U.S. Africa Command – said soldiers are building 10 Ebola treatment units instead of 17, and now the field hospitals have only 50 beds instead of 100.

“The majority of the big engineering and logistic things in Liberia will probably start to tail off at the end of the year [or] January. So that’s when we’ll probably start to send some of those people home,” he said.

There are currently 2,900 soldiers in Liberia, with at least 700 troops from the 101st Airborne Division which is leading the mission.

For the moment, the military is continuing to require returning service members to go through a 21-day quarantine to make sure they aren’t sick, though that policy is under review.

Rodriguez said there have been “encouraging advances” in stopping the spread of Ebola in Liberia. While there have been upticks in nearby Sierra Leone and Guinea, military officials say they don’t expect to move to either country, but they’re taking their cues from USAID.