A cargo ship on its way to Central Florida from West Africa is being closely monitored by the Coast Guard.
The EOT Spar cargo ship and its crew are heading to Port Canaveral from Sierra Leone, a focal point in the Ebola outbreak that has killed thousands.
The Coast Guard said they are closely monitoring the ship and that there is a low risk of getting Ebola from the crew arriving in Florida. They want to make that clear because there have been concerns spread on social media about the EOT Spar cargo vessel arriving in Central Florida.
Seas have been pretty bad, so it has delayed the ship’s arrival from Freetown in Sierra Leone.
If it arrives Friday then it will be 20 days at sea for the ship, one day shy of the period where Ebola symptoms would be apparent.
The Coast Guard said the crew has gone out of their way to check each other’s temperatures twice a day, with no symptoms present. Ten out of the 11 crew members are American.
The Coast Guard also said the crew took precautions while in Sierra Leone and none of them got off the ship and they only stayed docked in the port of Freetown for a few hours.
The Coast Guard said from Savannah to Miami, southeastern ports in the U.S. get 22 ships a month from West Africa. That accounts for about 1 percent of all traffic at those ports.