Posted on 10/13/2014 8:18:43 AM PDT by Rockitz
How did it happen?
That’s the big question as U.S. health officials investigate the case of a Dallas health worker who treated an Ebola patient and ended up with the disease herself.
These are professionals and this is the United States, where the best conditions and protective gear are available, unlike in West Africa, where the Ebola epidemic is raging in much poorer conditions.
The health worker wore protective gear while having extensive contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who died Wednesday of Ebola at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.
Officials say she has not been able to pinpoint any breach in infection control protocols, although there apparently was a breach, they say.
Second Ebola Case
Experience shows that health workers can safely care for Ebola patients, “but we also know that it’s hard and that even a single breach can result in contamination,” Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
The situation also raises fresh concerns about whether any U.S. hospital can safely handle Ebola patients, as health officials have insisted is possible.
“A breach in protocol could be anything from not taking your gloves off the right way to taking a dialysis catheter out of a dialysis patient and not disposing of it the right way,” explains Dr. Darrin D’Agostino, Chair of Internal Medicine UNT.
...
Q: How else could infection have happened?
A: Some of the garb the health worker takes off might brush against a surface and contaminate it. New data suggest that even tiny droplets of a patient’s body fluids can contain the virus, Maki said.
...
(Excerpt) Read more at dfw.cbslocal.com ...
Did the hospital have any such decontamination station set up? It has not been mentioned in any reports from Presbyterian nor the CDC.
Apparently a better procedure is to have a Buddy System assist in removing the gear and this is one thing the Nurse’s Assn. is requesting.
The N95 masks may not sufficiently afford protection, whereas a full CDC suit with outside air umbilical will.
Maybe its time we all watched Andromeda Strain again.
On the other hand, note how this story of her getting Ebola seems to have taken the spotlight off of the Obama bundler’s company that screwed up the electronics interface so the Ebola-infected patient was sent home from the hospital to infect dozens of people.
Instead, CDC is talking about how this poor nurse violated protocols in some way.
Obama loves to deflect blame.
Oh the Nurse totally breeched protocol. For sure 100% certain yup yup yup....
Another one for under the bus in order to make the king man-child Obama look good...
I wish the Firestone Company would detail the exact steps, exact equipment, and the exact protocols they followed to stop the spread at their plant.
I would think no medical system is designed to treat epidemics on this scale. However, there were very serious weaknesses in how the Dallas hospital responded to Mr. Duncan the first time he came to the ER, which probably won’t happen again. The least of which is when a person comes into the ER with a fever and says they were recently in West Africa, they won’t send him home with antibiotics.
I’m having a real hard time believing there is only 1 patient infected by Duncan (prayers for her complete recovery) and that nurse was in complete PPE.
It has been 17 days since Duncan first presented and 15 since he re-presented. I think we need to prepare for hundreds of new diagnoses this week.
He rolled the dice and became America’s Patient Zero...thanks to pResident Zero’s inane policies. The “lesson learned” SHOULD be to stop importing 0bola from W African flights/citizens.
Ebola HAS spread further...thanks to P0...praying his first victim survives.
The infected nurse is a sweet looking Vietnamese-American young lady raised in the Fort Worth area.
Purposed evil from Obola? I'm SHOCKED!/sarc
Also of note is the fact that in 2010 the Obama administration granted itself the patent for Ebola (and all future cures/vaccines related to it).
Now, the NIH is conducting vaccine trials in the US for an Ebola vaccine. Ebola vaccine trials
If the vaccine pans out, and the government controls the vaccines... then it has a powerful tool at its disposal to "fundamentally change" America forever.
If Ebola were "effectively airborne" (not a technical term) in more than, say, a one meter radius due to droplet dispersion then millions of Africans would be dead right now, not thousands.
If you stop flights, you do not just stop people from coming to the US, but also impede the necessary aid and medical staff from reaching West Africa to stop the spread of the disease. If people start lying about their nationalities and possible exposure because of the stigma, then it will be impossible track contacts for containment. Additionally, there are over 20 million people in West Africa, and at this point, only 8,000 have been infected.
As soon as the bug is identified as a “virus” there are certain things you have to know, understand, and act accordingly because of. My water chemistry guys point out that there is no way to mechanically filter out a virus from a fluid——the virus is just too small. That means that all of the face masks and cloth gowns, etc. being used that are in any way porous will not stop movement of the critter. Masks, if used at all, must be NBC type such that they are either air-fed or capable of chemically neutralizing the bug. Drawing air thru a chlorine water bath would be highly effective, for example. Disinfectant wash downs when leaving patient work areas MUST be used.
But remember how they transported the sick guys from Afreeka? They wrapped the patients up tight in baggiesuits-——that’s still the most effective way to keep a patient’s snotblowing isolated. Keep the patient isolated in his own bubble to prevent his spreading krap to the rest of the world. That’s far more effective and efficient than trying to keep an entire hospital ward deconned.
I’ll believe the krap out of DC when the Grand Kenyan goes to Dallas for a group hug with a couple of 103 degree specimens.
OK-—don’t stop flights. Just stop letting sick people on them to come here. The various gummints involved can dam sure transport all the help and equipment they need to the affected areas. In any case I fully expect the air crews themselves to begin refusing to either fly at all or insist on detailed screening of every one about to board their planes. It’s a little like Russian roulette at the moment: which puking native in the back of the bus is going to give the pilot something fatal?
No. She is a gorgeous young (26) Asian-American who should have her whole life ahead of her.
They had better take as good care of her as they did of Brantly, or every nurse in America will walk off the job.
OK, I’ll qualify that. Some mutations are effectively airborne. I’ve read that ebola has a reputation of being sloppy in its replication. Some mutations may be more amenable to airborne transmission than others.
Experts agree. Here’s one.
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2014/10/13/Expert-Ebola-Primed-to-Go-Airborne
Totally agree, but keeping people isolated through a 2-3 week incubation period probably borders on impossible.
In this presentation, the guy basically says it's near impossbile to trap airborne micron class particles.
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/aerosols/pdfs/aerosol_101.pdf
OK-—don’t stop flights. Just stop letting sick people on them to come here.Not arguing here, but a simple logistics reflection comes to mind: what do we do about the 21 day incubation period? How might we keep the infected from later flowering and then spreading the disease after they have already passed through the choke-points?
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