Joe,
The State Department contracted air service has done “10 Ebola related” transport missions, that is, at least six more than the four people acknowledged to date in the Media.
See:
Ebola evacuations to US greater than previously known
Transports have included patients exposed to virus, air ambulance operator says.
By Jason Sickles, Yahoo
2 hours ago
http://news.yahoo.com/us-ebola-evacuations-has-included-more-patients—air-ambulance-operator-says-160126831.html
“Phoenix Air’s modified Gulfstream III jets are “literally intensive care units with wings,” Thompson said. He said even evacuees without a confirmed Ebola diagnosis are placed in an isolation chamber for the 12- to 14-hour flight from West Africa to the U.S.
“You can never, ever let your safety guards down,” he said.
The Georgia-based air transport company got involved in the latest Ebola crisis when the Christian humanitarian group Samaritan’s Purse recruited it to evacuate Brantly and Writebol. The State Department was involved in the logistics, but the trips were funded by Samaritan’s Purse.
Since then, Thompson said, Phoenix Air has solely been under contract with the State Department.
“It became evident that we could no longer treat any of these flights as a private or commercial flight,” said Thompson, declining to divulge the specifics of the government contract.
Brantly, Writebol and the latest patient have been treated at Emory University in Atlanta. Last week, Sacra was flown to the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. Those hospitals, plus the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and St. Patrick’s Hospital in Missoula, Montana, have specially-equipped biocontainment units built in collaboration with the CDC. However, the CDC has said any U.S. hospital following infection control recommendations and isolating a patient in a private room is capable of safely managing an infected patient.
Thompson declined to say where patients who have just been exposed to Ebola have been flown to in the U.S.
“They all go to a hospital and they monitor them,” he said. “If they do develop it, then they treat them. And, fingers crossed, they’re going to walk out the way Brantly and Nancy Writebol walked out.””