Gregory Korte

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — President Obama has directed the Centers for Disease Control to dispatch rapid response "SWAT teams" of Ebola experts to any local hospital with an infected patient within 24 hours.

Obama's announcement followed a Cabinet-level meeting at the White House Wednesday to deal with the government's response to the Ebola outbreak.

Underscoring the urgency of the crisis, Obama postponed a long-planned trip to New Jersey and Connecticut to campaign for Democrats. That decision came shortly after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said a second Dallas health care worker who has tested positive for the deadly virus had recently returned from a flight to Cleveland.

The establishment of the rapid response teams follows an admission by CDC Director Thomas Frieden that he should have acted more quickly once a case of Ebola was discovered at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.

Obama said the government is also reviewing airport screening procedures, preparing for possible future cases of health care worker infections, and investigating the Dallas incidents to better understand what happened.

The president said his first thoughts were with the nurses who contracted Ebola.

"Our nurses and our health care workers are absolutely vital to the health and well-being of our families," he said. "They are selfless, they work hard, they're often underpaid, and so our thoughts and prayers are with them, and have to to make sure we are doing everything we can to take care of them, even as they take care of us."

Obama said Americans need to understand how Ebola is and isn;t spread, and used himself as an example.

"I shook hands with, hugged and kissed — not the doctors, but a couple of the nurses at Emory because of the valiant work that they did treating in one of the patients. They followed the protocols, they knew what they were doing, and I felt perfectly safe doing so.".

The special Cabinet-level meeting was Obama's first since July 1, and included the vice president, eight cabinet secretaries, White House officials and Frieden, who appeared by video teleconference from Atlanta.

Obama also spoke to key allies by video teleconference for 75 minutes Wednesday morning, with Ebola dominating the agenda.

Obama called for a "faster and more robust international response to the Ebola epidemic," asking for help with both financing and personnel, the White House said.

He spoke to U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi Wednesday. U.K. officials said the leaders also discussed evacuation procedures for infected health care workers.

Obama spoke separately with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe about the crisis late Tuesday..

Urging Americans not to underestimate the importance of the international response, Obama said aid work in Africa was not "simply charity," but "an investment in our own public health."

"I am absolutely confident that we can prevent a serious outbreak of the disease here in the United States," he said. "But it becomes more difficult to do so if this epidemic of Ebola rages out of control in West Africa. If it does, it will spread globally."

The president had planned to leave Wednesday afternoon to attend a Democratic Senate Campaign Committee fundraiser in Union, N.J., followed by a campaign rally with Connecticut Democrats featuring Gov. Dan Malloy in Bridgeport, Conn. The White House is working to reschedule that trip before the Nov. 4 election.

Unlike previous crises this summer in which Obama did not alter his schedule, "the president was not able to host that meeting and travel at the same time," Press Secretary Josh Earnest said.

Obama is scheduled to travel to Rhode Island and Long Island, N.Y. Thursday. No decision has been made whether to cancel that trip. "We'll evaluate it on a daily basis," Earmest said. "It's obviously a dynamic situation."

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