Posted on 10/02/2014 2:13:23 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Fears are rising about the spread of Ebola in Texas after health officials revealed an infected patient had come into contact with nearly 20 people over the weekend.
Health officials said they are working to track down every person who came in contact with the patient, who has been identified in multiple media reports as Thomas Eric Duncan of Liberia. He remains in serious condition at a Dallas hospital.
Duncan could have passed the virus to as many as 18 people between Wednesday, when he began to show symptoms of Ebola, and Sunday, when he entered medical isolation at Dallas Presbyterian.
Five of the people he came in contact with were children who attended school this week, local health officials said at a press conference without identifying the patient by name. Those people are now being kept at home in case they become ill.
Government officials from Dallas to the White House sought to maintain calm Wednesday, assuring the public that the virus is not easily transmitted and will be contained.
The chances of an Ebola epidemic in the United States are “incredibly low,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. “The reason for that is that it is not possible to transmit Ebola through the air. ... The only way that an individual can contract Ebola is by coming into contact with the bodily fluids of someone who is exhibiting symptoms.”
The assurances from the administration weren’t enough for some Dallas residents, who began pulling their children from school.
Earnest said the administration was not planning travel restrictions or additional airport screenings to prevent the spread of the virus.
“We’ve provided guidance to pilots, flight attendants and others who are responsible for staffing our transportation infrastructure to ensure that if they notice individuals who are exhibiting symptoms ... that the proper authorities are notified,” he said.
“In light of this incident, the administration has taken the step of re-circulating our guidance ... to make sure people are aware there is an important protocol that should be implemented.”
In Texas, nine experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are working with local health officials to identify any new Ebola cases.
People who came in contact with Duncan will be monitored for the next three weeks to see if any of them develop symptoms of the disease, officials said.
A bevy of new details were revealed Wednesday about Duncan, his travel from Liberia and his care in the United States.
The delivery driver is in his mid-40s and lives in Monrovia; he was sharing a home with a pregnant woman who was sick with Ebola, The New York Times reported. He apparently helped her travel to the hospital four days before his flight.
Duncan was not exhibiting symptoms at the time of his travel, and officials insisted he could not have infected fellow passengers. He came through Brussels en route to Dallas, a detail revealed Wednesday by a Canadian health official.
After arriving in Texas, Duncan did not seek medical care until Friday. Though Duncan told a nurse he had been traveling in Western Africa, the hospital sent him home with antibiotics, thinking he had the flu.
On Sunday Duncan was admitted and placed in medical isolation at the hospital after showing more severe symptoms.
As information is slowly released, officials have been seeking to tamp down fears that Duncan’s case could cause an outbreak.
The government has neither confirmed Duncan’s identity nor revealed his flight information, maintaining that none of the other passengers on his flight could have been infected.
“If you want to do what’s good by your viewers, you will tell them it’s zero chance” of getting Ebola from a person without symptoms, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said Wednesday.
Ebola is a hemorrhagic fever that initially looks like the flu. Transmitted through contact with blood, urine or other bodily fluids, it kills roughly 1 in 2 people it infects.
While several people have been brought to the United States to be treated for Ebola — including doctors who were infected while fighting the outbreak in Africa — the Texas patient is the first confirmed case of the virus in the United States.
“Ebola is a serious disease. ... It is a severe disease which has a high-case fatality rate,” said CDC Director Tom Frieden on Tuesday when announcing the infection to the nation.
“Still, there are core, tried-and-true public health interventions that can stop it.”
This story was updated at 7:51 p.m.
The students, who were not named, attend Conrad High School, Tasby Middle School, and Hotchkiss and Rogers elementary schools.
Superintendent Mike Miles said additional health professionals were assigned to those schools. And extra custodial staff will thoroughly clean the buildings each evening. A fifth school, Lowe Elementary, will also receive more resources because it is connected to Tasby.
Those campuses serve families in the Vickery Meadow area of northeast Dallas, where immigrants from around the world have settled in clusters of older apartment complexes.
The five children live in the apartment where a Liberian man, Thomas Eric Duncan, was staying after he arrived Sept. 20 in Dallas. He was admitted to Texas Health Presbyterian of Dallas on Sunday, and officials confirmed Tuesday that he has Ebola.
That news spurred some parents to pull their children out of school Wednesday, while others said they were considering keeping their kids home.
Mayra Duarte picked up her first-grader at Hotchkiss after learning about the Ebola connection on the Dallas ISD Facebook page..........
Dallas hospital knew man had been to West Africa but didn’t isolate him for Ebola testing "Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital officials apparently failed to follow federal guidelines in their initial handling of the man now known to have the deadly Ebola virus by sending him home after he told a nurse he had recently traveled from West Africa.
Thomas Eric Duncan of Liberia showed up at the Dallas emergency room about 10 p.m. Sept. 25 with what hospital officials said was fever and abdominal pain. A nurse questioned him about travel, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention protocol recommends, and Duncan acknowledged he had been in Liberia just seven days earlier, hospital officials said.
But key members of the medical team were not alerted to his travel history. And instead of being placed in an isolation unit and tested for Ebola, as the guidelines issued two months ago suggest, he was given antibiotics and sent home, they said.
“He volunteered that he had traveled to Africa,” Dr. Mark Lester, the southeast clinical leader for Texas Health Resources, the hospital’s parent company, told reporters Wednesday. “That information was not fully disseminated.”
Lester declined to elaborate on who was responsible for the miscommunication or how many employees were involved. By the time Duncan returned to the hospital by ambulance two days later, his condition had worsened, officials said. He was immediately placed in an isolation room and tested for Ebola.
The failure to isolate Duncan after his symptoms emerged meant that he could have exposed others for days to the deadly virus. Public health officials stressed Wednesday that they were monitoring everyone who had been in contact with Duncan since he began showing symptoms Sept. 24. It can take 21 days for a patient to become sick....."
It is incredible that this was overlooked on this man's first ER visit.
Sure, ask the questions, but don’t be so gullible as to take all of the answers as gospel.
It is not clear how Patient Zero was screened at the airport. All we know is that he did not have a fever or symptoms when he got on the planes and was therefore not contagious, thus, no one in the airports in Liberia, Brussels, or Texas need worry. And I have a bridge to sell you…
But what if he took a Tylenol before he went to the airport for a headache or an aching knee? That would have masked a fever, so it is possible he (or someone else on the plane who was exposed and took a Tylenol) was actually symptomatic and contagious. One sneeze into your row-mate’s Pepsi, and the virus is on the prowl, with a chaotic chain of events unleashed......."
BS. It is the job of the attending physician to get a complete history.
Exactly correct. And the next few weeks are gonna be very enlightening.
I’m waiting to hear who Obama blames. Will this be Bush’s fault again?
And what of the flight attendants on the 2 United Airline flights? Have they (under a policy of extreme caution, concern and consideration for their customers) been told by United Airlines that they won’t be working for 3 weeks, or are they still on the job serving hundreds of passengers?
“........CDC officials have said that there is no risk of catching the Ebola virus from passengers who shared commercial airline flights with the first confirmed U.S. patient.
United said Wednesday it agreed with the agency’s declaration.
“The director of the CDC has stated there is ‘zero risk of transmission’ on any flight on which the patient flew because he was not symptomatic until several days after his trip and could not have been contagious on the dates he traveled,” the company said. “While the CDC states it is unnecessary for it or the airline to contact others who were on the patient’s flights, United is providing information about the flights United believes the patient took, based on information provided by the CDC. We are ensuring our employees have this information and suggest that any customers who have concerns contact the experts at the CDC for further information.”
http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/219511-us-ebola-patient-flew-united-airlines-from-dc
Or, Climate Change
and/or the Tea Party?
“The White House said Wednesday it will not impose travel restrictions or introduce new airport screenings to prevent additional cases of Ebola from entering the United States.
Spokesman Josh Earnest said that current anti-Ebola measures, which include screenings in West African airports and observation of passengers in the United States, will be sufficient to prevent the “wide spread” of the virus........
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/219492-white-house-no-ebola-travel-restrictions
Michelle Obama and this administration have shown way WAY more concern about healthy school lunches than stopping an Ebola epidemic.
Bttt
Any or all of those. After posting here, I wouldn’t be surprised if it weren’t my fault.
I’m sure they desensitized the bathrooms on the plane after the long flight / sarcasm
If white elites and their children start dying,only then would something be done!
This is a busy city emergency room. The triage nurse or whatever on duty probably got the information but didn’t bother to mention it in his or her report to the medical personnel. This guy had every red flag in the universe, so you’d think that somebody would have noticed something, but I think they probably have a lot of patients to treat and they get careless.
Also, travel to Liberia is probably not that unusual in North Texas - there are some 10,000 Liberians living there.
The bastard knew he had it.
Rank incompetence and selfishness all around. Government officials all the way down to this man need to be punished. I don’t care if he is sick. What he has done is wrong and the officials who didn’t protect the public are wrong. What if it were YOUR loved one who dies from this stupidity?
I posted a comment that he should be indicted, tried and executed (or left to die quickly) and have been flamed. Absolutely intolerable reaction towards me in light of what this man has unleashed.
I posted a comment that he should be indicted, tried and executed (or left to die quickly) and have been flamed. Absolutely intolerable reaction towards me in light of what this man has unleashed.
A link to this thread has been posted on the Ebola Surveillance Thread
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