Director of the Texas task force on infectious disease preparedness and response Dr Brett Giroir addresses the media regarding the Ebola cases diagnosed in Texas, as Texas Governor Rick Perry, second from right, and Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins look on.

Reuters/Washington

The new US Ebola "czar" starts work on Wednesday as the Obama administration ramps up its response to the potential spread of the virus, and drugmakers started a project to accelerate development of a vaccine and produce millions of doses.

As the administration boosted airport screening measures in response to criticism that it was slow to act against Ebola, a Pentagon rapid-response Ebola medical team was scheduled to begin training at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas.

The virus has killed more than 4,500 people, predominantly in three impoverished West African countries, in the worst outbreak of the disease since it was identified in 1976.

US President Barack Obama was set to hold a meeting on Wednesday with Ron Klain, his new Ebola response co-ordinator, amid rising Republican criticism ahead of congressional elections next month.

Klain, a lawyer and veteran Democratic political operative, was expected to improve co-ordination between the federal government and the states after three cases were diagnosed in the US, all in Texas; Liberian Thomas Eric Duncan, who died on October 8 in Dallas, and two nurses who treated him.

Leading drugmakers said on Wednesday that they planned to develop an Ebola vaccine and produce millions of doses of the most effective experimental product for use next year.

The World Health Organisation said it hopes tens of thousand of people in Africa, including front-line healthcare workers, can start receiving vaccines beginning in January. Johnson & Johnson announced that it aims to produce 1mn doses of its two-step vaccine next year.

The US Defense Department's emergency medical team - including five infectious disease doctors, 20 critical care nurses and five trainers who are experts in infectious disease protocols - will gather in Texas on Wednesday to start three days of training, the Pentagon said.

The Obama administration has ratcheted up its response to Ebola but so far has stopped short of a travel ban from West African countries hit by Ebola demanded by some lawmakers.

The Department of Homeland Security said on Tuesday that travelers from the three countries at the centre of the epidemic - Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea - would be funneled to one of five major US airports conducting enhanced screening for the virus. The restrictions on passengers whose trips originated in those countries were due to go into effect on Wednesday.

Affected travelers will have their temperatures checked for signs of a fever that may indicate Ebola infection, among other protocols, at New York's John F. Kennedy, New Jersey's Newark, Washington Dulles, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta, and Chicago's O'Hare international airports, officials said.

A Reuters/Ipsos online poll released on Tuesday showed that nearly three-fourths of 1,602 Americans surveyed favoured a US ban on civilian air travel in and out of the three countries.

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